<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Life in the Wild by DiscoTrain</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27708383">Life in the Wild</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscoTrain/pseuds/DiscoTrain'>DiscoTrain</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (Video Game), The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 | JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken | JoJo's Bizarre Adventure</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Action/Adventure, Apocalypse, Blood and Injury, Crossover, Death, Exploration, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Calamity, Romance, Tension, War, breath of the wild AU, this literally started as drabbles and became something much more lol</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 07:09:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>37,872</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27708383</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscoTrain/pseuds/DiscoTrain</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Fate had preordained that the Joestars, descendants of an ancient hero who vanquished the Calamity 10,000 years ago, would once again take up the mantle of defeating Calamity DIO. As each day passed, the threat of the advent of Calamity grew closer, and with the recent unearthing of ancient technology used to destroy the Calamity, there was still much to learn in no time at all. Each day was more precious than the last. However, fate had also determined that their efforts would be useless in the end. In the final moments of a preapocalyptic Hyrule, the strengths of the Joestars would shine as bright as the stars in the sky until the light of the very last one is nearly blotted out. In the meantime, they shared their love, fostered peace, and forged memories to break through the shroud of despair at the crux of fate.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Johnny Joestar/Gyro Zeppeli</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. The Last Thing I'd Want to Lose is You</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hello! This is my second published fanfiction and inspired by my intense love of the videogame The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. At the time of posting the first chapter of this fanfiction, I'm also reading through JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 7: Steel Ball Run, which also helped to inspire the idea for this story through its western and survival in the wilderness themes. And Gyjo :D. Although this story is set in the universe of Breath of the Wild, some notable adjustments have taken place. I tried estimating the approximate distances of one named area on the map to the next, and if you're ever confused about the map in general, I advise you to check out the interactive Breath of the Wild Hyrule map found at ZeldaDungeon.net for clarity: https://www.zeldadungeon.net/breath-of-the-wild-interactive-map/. This is the same map that I used when writing about the specific locations mentioned in the story.</p>
<p>Regarding the story itself, each chapter will focus on a snapshot of time before the Calamity had risen up and destroyed civilization. Each episode is meant to paint just a tiny portion of the greater picture of Hyrule and its inhabitants, especially the Joestars, before the Calamity complicates everything. Speaking of the Joestars, each JoJo (parts 1-8) is intended to be present in this universe, even if there are some that haven't been explicitly written in a chapter. Just imagine that they're off training or taking a nice nature walk with a significant other or a JoBro to enjoy the beauty of Hyrule. Very rarely will post-Calamity Hyrule be portrayed, but it's not out of the question.</p>
<p>In this chapter and potentially future chapters, I mention one of my original characters--a JoJo named Jocelyn Jones--but the intended style of narrative doesn't focus on them much, so knowing prior details about their character is irrelevant to the story at large. If I decide differently, I'll make sure to write in the relevant details about this character when it counts the most. The text between the ~*~*~* describes the events of a flashback as well as the italicized dialogue within that section.</p>
<p>Please leave comments either telling me what you've liked or how I could improve in a constructive, helpful manner. I haven't yet finished Part 7 nor started part 8, so my characterization may be off. As more chapters are added, I'll update the tags, and perhaps the rating, appropriately. For now, chapter 1 features some cussing and mild violence, so a T rating is appropriate.</p>
    </blockquote><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>In which Johnny and Gyro embark on a little trip together to investigate the existence of dragons spoken of in old Hylian legends.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The sun rose to the east of Riverside Stable, and the warm orange and pink glow from the horizon gently settled upon the calm waters of the Hylia River. Gyro crouched down at the bank of the river and wet his bare hands with the cool water, took them out to wash with a bar of worn-down soap he had brought from home then rinsed within the river. As the steady flow of the river swept away the suds to the south, he thought he saw his shadowy reflection on the water’s surface. Just yesterday, he left his hometown behind with Johnny, his best friend and companion for years, in the aftermath of stumbling upon a travel journal left by Traysi, the world-renowned traveler and rumor-extraordinaire of Hyrule.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Dragons actually exist!</span>
  </em>
  <span>” She proclaimed in her well-worn journal on crusty pages stained with thin ribbons of black ink. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>‘No way! That simply can’t be true!’ Is what you’re thinking right now? I used to think that too...But then I traveled to Lanaryru, Akkala, and Faron, and I heard some real eyewitness accounts!</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Despite some more skeptical Hylians dismissing Traysi’s ideas as eccentric, Gyro entertained the thought of encountering one of these dragons, capturing the very image with the Sheikah Slate, and bringing it home to spread awareness to both Hateno and Kakariko Villages. It had long been told from generation to generation that a great dragon lived on the highest point of Mount Lanaryu to the east of his home Kakariko Village, but the mountain was a most sacred place and forbidden to anyone outside of the royal family lineage. His father had told him thus, and he didn’t dare to venture against his father’s word on this front.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>~*~*~*</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>With a clear, calm, and steady voice, Gregorio had warned his eldest son, “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Do not go to that mountain. It is sacrilegious for anyone outside of the Royal Family of Hyrule to walk upon that sacred land. It is our duty as servants to the king to keep strict watch over the gateway to that mountain.</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Although he never once raised his voice, Gregorio’s calm words and unflinching eye contact from behind his desk across the room from his son proved effective enough to haunt Gyro’s thoughts whenever he recalled the image of that striking mountain caked in white snow looming over the hills and over the village. He had to admit that ever since he was a young boy and looked upon that mountain for the first time, he felt some visceral desire to investigate it for his own sake.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>While Gyro lingered within the deep silence following his father’s warning, William Zeppeli ascended the stairs to the second floor of their shared house and entered Gregorio’s office with Traysi’s rumor mill and another crusty book in his hands. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>I’ve heard about this before</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” He strode across the room and carefully opened the older crusty book by inserting a finger into the yellowed pages then setting it down on the desk. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>There is an old legend of the origin of the Dueling Peaks to the southwest. What are two mountains today were once the same during our ancestors’ time...until a dragon god arrived</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” With utmost care in how he glided his finger underneath the next page and flipped it over, he pointed to a faded diagram of a snake-like creature hovering over a great, divided mountain. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>...and split the mountain into two.</span>
  </em>
  <span>” He tapped the simplified fissure splitting the mountain apart then at the snake-like creature. Gyro peered over his shoulder and realized that it could have been this dragon, but the colors were too faded. The borders of the creature were incomplete in areas and lightly colored in others, and any other shade that could have illustrated the dragon’s body were too muted to distinguish any significant detail. Whatever this book was, William had kept it in his possession for a very long time, most likely when Gyro’s father was just a boy. Perhaps even longer.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>What help could these dragons provide? The legends of the Calamity from 10,000 years ago make no such mention of dragons assisting the cause</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” Gregorio said as his eyes poured over any detail he could ascertain from the faded images before him.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Intriguingly, our ancestors once received scales from the dragon Naydra upon Mount Lanaryu and used them in their cooking to assist the hero</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” Gregorio didn’t react at that fact, but Gyro did with more questions lingering in his mind. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>There are also three shrines that are significant to this story</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” William continued and flipped another page. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Historically, only the women of the Royal Family have visited these sites to pray and purify their souls, but that was much before our own time or even the time of our grandparents. Here</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” He pointed directly towards three odd symbols always arranged in a triangular fashion at the center top of the page, above a heavy wall of smeared and dusty text. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>These three markings have been used in association with the dragons as well as those shrines. You may be familiar with this one</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” He gestured to the blue symbol--three crescents with their curves touching each other in an inverse triangular arrangement with a solid blue dot filling out the cavity of each crescent. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>This symbol has been used as a crest that belongs to the princess, so there may be a connection of this crest to the Spring of Wisdom on the peak of Mount Lanayru</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Where are the other two springs? Could there be more than just the Spring of Wisdom?</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Gregorio asked and diligently scanned each image with the same attention and care that he would employ if he was studying a complex anatomical diagram of the human body within one of his medical textbooks.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>I’ve translated most of this text, from whatever I could discern of the faded ink, and I believe that the Akkala and Faron Regions were mentioned here</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” Afterwards, Gyro soon saw his chance to propose his plan to his father and took his shot in good faith that it would advance their cause.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>I can find them</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” He spoke a little too quickly than he wanted and drew the cold attention of both William and Gregorio. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Johnny and I will search the Akkala and Faron Regions for the springs</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” That didn’t evoke the reaction he had been hoping for. Instead, Gregorio lowered his reading glasses from his face while William stood upright from the desk. Neither looked pleased with Gyro's offer. He anticipated either of them declining his offer without additional help because both goals would lead them far away from the protection of the Necluda Hills. The elder Zeppeli men were well aware of the increasing cases of monster sightings all across Hyrule, even near the settlements, and both hardly considered leaving their village nestled in the mountains without a trained team to prepare themselves for whatever may happen.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>In the end, they let him leave the village upon Valkyrie and with Johnny and his horse Slow Dancer with the exception that they establish a steady line of communication with carrier pigeons and avoid conflicts at all costs. Together in the golden light of the morning sun seeping down into the mountains and valleys, the two passed through the narrow path through the mountains towards the west and carefully descended down the Sahasra Slope while maintaining a slight shift to the northwest. The last thing they needed was to wear out their horses when their journey had just started. Explaining the mission to Johnny went surprisingly well than Gyro had anticipated. When they had married just a year prior, Johnny had vowed to follow Gyro wherever he would go and to protect him should ill-fortune befall them, and Gyro promised the same. It was no wonder, then, that Johnny would agree to join him. Through fields of grasslands that steeply sloped downwards, great green trees yielding almost ripened apples, gently curved rocks, and spare bushes, they rode onwards against a cool breeze wafting across their faces towards the overwhelming view of Hyrule Field sprawling for miles before them, and the towering Hebra Mountain serving as the backdrop for the castle looming within Central Hyrule. The freedom and adrenaline of rushing down the wide-open slope with grand nature all around them empowered both of them to move forward confidently; before either of them knew it, a few hours had passed and they finally reached the well-worn dirt road to the southwest of the Millennio Sandbar within the Lanaryu Wetlands. According to Gyro’s calculations, they could arrive at the Riverside Stable in the middle of the afternoon to give them enough time to rest and play around before setting off towards the Bridge of Hylia upon the next morning.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>At a three-way crossroad, they made a sharp turn left and followed the road south towards Eagus Bridge. As a wooden bridge without railings and supported by a network of wooden beams and columns emerging from the waters below, it could hold multiple horses, even a line of wagons crossing over without weakening. Before they crossed, Johnny looked to his right and observed a lone flat island splitting the Hylia River into two streams. More specifically, what had caught his eye was the large roughly triangular shaped building resting in the center of that island, the Floret Sandbar. It looked unusual for a house; in fact, it looked much like a similar building overlooking Kakariko Village. He had spotted a group of researchers gather around that building, take their notes, and have their conversations then leave without much happening afterwards. In any event, it always seemed to be lying dormant, as if waiting for the chance to reawaken. He gathered Gyro’s attention by riding up, tapping on his shoulder and pointing towards the Floret Sandbar. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Gyro, what is that building over there? There’s another one just like it in the village. It never...does anything. Have you found out any more information about it?</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Not yet,</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Gyro answered as he stared at the moving image of the shrine while entering Eagus Bridge. There was a certain allure to that one building; Gyro was certain that the inside was hollow and connected to a large space far underground, at least as he could determine from the vibration of his steel balls, but no matter what he tried, the doors would not budge for him. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>My old man says that it’s a shrine built by my ancestors thousands of years ago to assist the hero when the Calamity awakens, but even with the Sheikah Slate, it still won’t open for anyone.</span>
  </em>
  <span>” At that moment, Johnny, by chance, lowered his gaze to Gyro’s hip and noticed the rectangular Sheikah Slate hanging from his belt next to one of his steel balls. As far as Gyro knew, it was the only one of its kind, fashioned again by his ancestors with the intention to be used by the hero spoken of in those 10,000 year old legends. It seemed too fantastical to be believed. Surely, in those thousands of years, some aspects of the legend would fade over time, leaving gaps open to be filled in with half-truths or outright fabrications. On the other hand, the legend may have been simply a gross exaggeration of true events--a heroic and fantastic retelling of historical facts maybe to paint their ancestors in a greater light of glory. Johnny wasn’t about to voice his skepticisms towards Gyro, especially when his family was close to the heart of the legend, but it would be interesting in the coming days to see what happens next. Despite his skepticism, he couldn’t deny the very real fact that monster fighting and evading were becoming a very normal part of their routine life. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>There must be some sort of trigger,</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Gyro continued while still looking back to that shrine, as if his eyes were glued to the sight, “</span>
  <em>
    <span>No, there </span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>is</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span> a special trigger that could open those shrines up, but we haven’t figured out what it could be. For now</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” They crossed Eagus Bridge completely and approached another crossroad. They would make a right turn at the fork in the road and continue towards Horwell Bridge, a much more low-lying bridge whose crossing surface was a mere few feet from the water level.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>...Do you think it’ll open in time?</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Johnny hesitated before he asked and deliberately danced around mentioning the Calamity itself. The legends might have been too fantastical for his taste, but he understood well the risks of traveling in open Hyrule in an age where the whole of civilization felt unbearably tense. Gyro looked at him in thought and tried to observe his face for tell-tale emotions, but Johnny had pulled up ahead of him, so all Gyro could observe were his ear and part of his right cheek.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>What do you mean, Johnny? ‘</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>It’ll open in time?</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>’ What did you mean by that?</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Pressured by his husband deliberately egging him on, Johnny bit his bottom lip slightly and knew that his ears were getting red. What was worse is that he reasoned that Gyro must have known how he felt during the last few weeks, ever since Jotaro arrived in Kakariko Village to report on a swarm of monsters that he, Josuke, and Jocelyn had defeated in the rugged mountains surrounding Death Mountain volcano to the far northeast. It was an unprecedented event, one that sparked uneasiness in the Royal Family, the Zeppeli family, and the Joestars alike.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>I mean</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” He paused to choose his words carefully. He understood that Gyro would want to stay looking on the positive side of their situation, but he still felt the short jolts of anxiety flowing through his muscles whenever he imagined the worst of what was yet to come. It wasn’t a matter of “</span>
  <em>
    <span>if</span>
  </em>
  <span>” to him, but </span>
  <em>
    <span>“when</span>
  </em>
  <span>” it would arrive. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Will we have it ready when the Calamity arrives?</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Johnny-</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>The Calamity is coming for us, Gyro. It’s coming.</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Gyro stayed silent with a solemn expression on his face, closed his mouth and decided to let him continue for as long as he wanted. He had learned during his time living with Johnny that his husband responded better when his fears or concerns were fully communicated before Gyro offered a response. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>I can...feel it--I can’t explain why, but I can just </span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>feel it</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>. It’s instinctual, like knowing that it’s dangerous to travel at night, or seeing dark clouds forming in the sky over the horizon and watching those clouds creep towards you, or even looking upon a dormant volcano and wondering when’s the next day it’ll erupt. So don’t tell me again that we can stop it from happening.</span>
  </em>
  <span>” He looked back at Gyro again and saw that he held a different expression on his face--one that suggested sympathy--and with patience, Gyro responded while looking directly at Johnny. It was his turn to speak carefully lest he stoke the flames of Johnny’s fear and overall apprehensive mood.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>I never doubted that it would come, Johnny. All of the legends warned us about the Calamity reawakening, and the evidence is there--you heard Jotaro’s numerous reports about the surge of monster sightings. But what I meant to say to you is that I’m confident that we can fight back against the Calamity.</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Johnny remained silent and slowed down enough so that he rode alongside Gyro before they arrived at the bridge and turned more attentively to his face. Admittedly, the anxiety started filling his field of vision with a few tears, but he wouldn’t allow them to fall, not now. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Think about it, Johnny. We know enough about the Divine Beasts to control them; we’ve already appointed Champions to pilot each of them with success, and we’ve found the means to control the Guardians. All that we don’t have is the power contained within those shrines, but I don’t think that matters. We have the same assets our ancestors had within the legend, and it was far more than enough to destroy the Calamity. We’re beyond prepared for this, Johnny. Trust me.</span>
  </em>
  <span>” It was a small gesture, but it helped to lighten the load on Johnny’s heart, even by a small margin to make the day-to-day wait bearable. Johnny mulled over Gyro’s words for a while as the two rode in silence across Horwell Bridge and rounded the turn to the left beyond the bridge.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Within seconds, a visceral screech coupled with a chorus of growls shattered the calm silence between them and took both of them by surprise, then a silver bokoblin leapt out of a nearby tree to lunge at Gyro’s neck with a broadsword clutched in its three-fingered hand. A flurry of flying birds escaping the trees had alarmed both Johnny and Gyro, muting their attention somewhat away from the incoming monster, and in a split-second decision, Gyro ducked and slide off of his horse’s saddle, leaving the bokoblin to fly clear over the horse and land on the ground a mere two meters away from him. Gyro braced himself with his arms before he crashed into the dirt and peered underneath his horse to watch the bokoblin’s movements. Johnny, on the other hand, carefully scanned the trees and upon moving away from the few trees near them to stand in the open, high ground of Whistling Hill’s slope, he turned his attention to the bokoblin. It stood upright at a height of approximately five feet, sniffed the ground and roared. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Gyro, are you okay? Can you stand up? I didn’t expect a bokoblin to hide in a tree, of all things.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Are there more of them?</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Gyro quickly rose to his feet and dashed around his horse to keep the squealing and oinking bokoblin in sight. It was a vile thing--it’s mouth stretched nearly from ear to ear, held just a handful of sharp fangs and released atrocious-smelling drool whenever it barked or hungrily stared at anything that moved. Its hands possessed three fingers, but its grip was just as strong as any human, and Gyro knew that the silver variants could swing their weapons with enough might to snap human bones. Keeping his distance was key to thwarting this vessel of evil. The bokoblin turned and stormed towards Gyro with the fires of malice burning bright within its beady red eyes, and with a grating screech, it leapt forth, closed the distance between them and intended to slice him clean in half when it brought its sword down upon him. With a firm pat on its hind leg, Valkyrie hustled out of the way for a few meters, and Gyro instinctively side-stepped the incoming bokoblin then threw a steel ball towards it. While he did land a significant blow to the bokoblin’s shoulder, forcing it to drop its weapon, the rush of adrenaline and lack of warning slightly shifted his aim and caused him to miss his original target of the beast’s heart. With the broadsword on the ground, Gyro kicked it towards the river, and Johnny prepared to fire his nail bullets to finish the creature off with certainty.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Only he would have fired if he didn’t hear the chorus of growls and trampling feet echoing over the Whistling Hill behind him. When he turned around, he witnessed one of his worst fears come alive: a camp of bokoblins and even two moblins stampeded towards them, trampling the grass before them. There were even a golden moblin and two golden bokoblins among them! He knew it was too much for the both of them to handle after being taken by surprise. So, Johnny turned back and fired his bullets, but only one hit the bokoblin’s ankle as it leapt out of his line of fire. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Gyro, just now! There’s a camp of them running at us! We have to go; we can’t defeat them here!</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>If we leave now, they might follow us to the stable. Any bets on how suited the stable workers are to fighting monsters? We have to divert them somehow. Keep your distance and keep firing your nail bullets!</span>
  </em>
  <span>” He took to his heels, sprinting towards Valkyrie and eyeing the distance to the top of the hill. The peak, marked by a small group of trees, had to be about 300 meters away from his point at the base. If they could just divert the camp over that hill and away from the road leading to the stable, they could sprint across Hyrule Field, circle around Whistling Hill and hopefully lose them before they arrive at the stable. In the worst-case scenario, they could corral the camp and force the monsters to separate then divide and conquer. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He leapt upon his horse’s saddle and sharply steered towards the right with Johnny following his lead up the hill. The ordeal would surely put a strain on their horses, but they were confident the chase wouldn’t last long--Johnny already dispatched one bokoblin with his nail bullets and weakened others. As expected, the monsters pursued them across the hill, some even resorting to clawing at the ground on all fours to gain more speed, but even so, Valkyrie and Slow Dancer eluded their grasp and reached the hilltop first. Charging forward immediately but remaining cautious of the downward slope, Gyro scanned ahead for anything that could be of use while Johnny kept firing at any monster who dared to lunge forward and close the gap between them. Fortunately, at the base of the hill, Gyro spotted an abandoned camp at the edge of a very small forest. There wasn’t much remarkable about this camp other than the red explosive barrels placed around the makeshift settlement. It seemed clear that </span>
  <em>
    <span>this</span>
  </em>
  <span> was the camp where the monsters lurked, waiting for their scout to mount an attack, so Gyro charged forward with Johnny close behind. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Johnny, do you see that?</span>
  </em>
  <span>” He pointed to the encampment, particularly towards those dull red barrels.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>It’s a camp! It doesn’t look like there’s anyone there now. Do you think those monsters used it?</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Yeah, but more importantly, see those red barrels?</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Johnny nodded after he flinched and looked back--a few of the monsters following them gained a bit of ground and brandished their weapons, including bows and arrows, in the spirit of bloodlust. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>We’re gonna run right towards that camp settlement, and when we pass it, I want you to fire your nails at those barrels right when the monsters get there. We’re gonna blow these creeps sky high.</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Johnny silently nodded and focused on the road ahead of him. He became aware of his sweating, especially on his palms, as they raced closer to the camp with the harrowing sounds of the monsters’ growls, grunts, and snorts creeping closer behind them. About 100 meters away from the camp, his nails began to spin, and when he passed the camp behind Gyro, he turned within his seat, took his aim and fired multiple shots at the barrels around the camp. There were probably ten of them, at least from what he could tell, but they were spaced close enough together that setting off one would produce the chain reaction of exploding the others. When the monsters reached the settlement, Johnny’s spinning nails took flight and created enough friction to set the first barrel alight. Before his eyes, cloud after cloud after cloud of swirling hot orange-red flames bursted around the settlement, blasting the monsters into the air to plummet and explode their guts when they smacked into the ground. The foliage too was blown away and embers scattered across the dirt and grass, but these were put out by the wind of the blasts and the strengthening breeze plowing through the field. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Great job, Johnny! You really showed those bastards.</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Gyro grinned and held a fist in the air level with his shoulder when he looked back at his partner then he guided them to the left and began to circle around the Whistling Hill towards the stable. Johnny, on the other hand, wiped away the sweat forming along the sides of his face and looked back at the fallen corpses of the monsters blown to bits. Their limbs and pieces of flesh were strewn across the fields, the ground stained dark purple with monster blood and other juices, and massive chunks of body parts, like the torso, lay splattered and mostly charcoaled. If the sight wasn’t the worst of it, the smell certainly was. Charcoaled flesh and the acrid smoke from the barrels diffused through the area faster than Johnny had anticipated and made him grimace upon breathing it.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>I didn’t expect them to be that smart, to lie in wait for us like that then call in backup. It’s not too late to turn back, Gyro. If they can assault us out here in the open then who knows,</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>I’m not going back. Not yet.</span>
  </em>
  <span>” His tone remained firmly resolute and his grin had disappeared, signaling Johnny to tread carefully.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>But Gyro, we’re ill-equipped to face these things without additional help. There could be more camps waiting for us to make one wrong move in the jungle, or anywhere, for that matter.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Johnny.</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Gyro slipped the Sheikah Slate off of his belt and presented it, one hand clasped upon the handle. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Do you know what this is?</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Expecting to be answered by Johnny’s silence, he continued. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>This is a Sheikah Slate, which was also created by my ancestors. My father and William think that it was meant to be used by the hero to fight the Calamity, but until then, it’s my responsibility to research its functions and report back to the princess. That’s why I have it with me now. If there’s a chance that these dragons could help the hero or even the princess with the fight then I’ll use it to make that happen. Anything could work, even snapshots of the dragons or the locations surrounding their shrines. I intend to catalogue those dragons and make them useful to our cause. If I can even do that much then I can be a proud Zeppeli.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>That’s what this is about? This is just one dangerous photoshoot? You’re dragging me out here just because you want to take a few fuzzy photos of a flying lizard?</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>...I didn’t drag you here. You agreed to come.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Hardly.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>You even begged to go with me.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>What--I didn’t beg--</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>‘Oh, Gyro,’</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Gyro elevated the pitch of his voice and tried his best to imitate Johnny’s slight drawl, which instantly irked his companion. “</span>
  <span>‘</span>
  <em>
    <span>Please don’t go! I just have to go with you, to make sure you’re protected and well-taken care of</span>
  </em>
  <span>,’</span>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>I didn’t say that, and you know it.</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Johnny pouted, a habit of his ever since he moved to Kakariko to live with Gyro probably because he realized that Gyro thought it was cute and desired to see more of that expression. Despite his frustrations, Johnny didn’t mind showing it to him again in this context, so long as they were alone.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>No, but you thought about it.</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Gyro winked at him and with a laugh, turned away from Johnny’s tell-tale blush and picked up speed along the trail. Neither of them noticed nor heard the sight of a black bokoblin stretching an arrow across its spiked wooden bokoblin bow and firing a single shot into the air. Instead, Johnny could have sworn he heard the faint whizzing of something flying towards them at high speeds, but he later dismissed it as simply the buzzing of the bees as they passed a large bee’s nest hanging from a branch of a tree to their left. He quickly realized his folly when the sound grew closer, resembling whistling piercing through the air and into their ears, until the entire pointed head of the arrow plunged into Gyro’s left arm. He leaned forward and let out a grunt upon being attacked suddenly, again, and inspected the arrow then the nearby surroundings, but he wasn’t fast enough to dodge a second arrow that lodged into his left hand. Valkyrie, sensing his distress, veered off his original course and into the grassy fields, and Slow Dancer stopped abruptly amidst the confusion.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Gyro!</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Johnny called out and scanned the area to the left of him, nervousness swelling in his chest and throat when he couldn’t locate the aggressor. Instead, he trained his ears to locate the sound of an arrow whistling through the air or even the sound of a bow being strung taut. Bokoblins tended to wield wooden bows, after all, which were shoddily made if the monsters crafted them and would require less distance between the archer and the target if the creature wanted to make accurate shots. It had to be lurking nearby, and he had a good idea about where the damned thing was hiding. ‘</span>
  <em>
    <span>Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice,</span>
  </em>
  <span>’ He thought and fired a few nail bullets into the top of the large tree to their left. And the reward was the bokoblin flopping out of the tree and crashing onto its side--dead. Several bullet holes sliced through its head--between its eyes and through its bottom lip--and in its hands, it clutched a spiked bokoblin bow. Johnny caught up with Gyro who kept up his pace along the dirt road but kept the arrows embedded within his skin. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>I can take those out for you. The arrows don’t appear to pierce completely through the limb.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>No, I’ll wait until we get to the stable.</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Gyro grit his teeth at first from the initial sting of the metal slicing through his flesh. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>These might have been barbed arrows; I’ll have to cut them out and clean the wounds. From now on, no more fucking around. Keep scanning ahead.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Barely audible, Johnny retorted underneath his breath. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>It’s about time you took this seriously.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>They galloped with vigilance as the sun moved westward and the light of day dimmed into the vibrant orange twilight. The earth around them darkened at a steady pace and struck out as a constant reminder of the danger in the wild that hunted for them until the dull lights of the stable shone forth like a beacon. It had to be no more than a few hundred meters ahead. Within no time, they had arrived at the Riverside Stable and registered with the stable keeper. The stable beds awaited them, but it was understood far and wide among travelers that these beds were far inferior to those offered in the inns of established settlements. While their shared bed in Kakariko was crafted from the down of the cuccos bred and raised within the village, the mattresses of the stable beds were stuffed with hay by hurried stable workers. Still, they figured it was a sizable improvement from merely sleeping on the ground.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Gyro immediately dismounted Valkyrie and headed towards the riverbank with the stinging of the arrows embedded in his flesh flashing through his mind. He would have to cut them out, Johnny recalled with concern while he pursued him to offer unconditional support. Sitting at the riverbed, Gyro took out his knife from one of his saddle sacks he had removed from his horse with his right hand, along with fresh bandages and the single bar of soap he had packed, then examined his wounds. The arrows still stung deep within his hand and arm, but as Johnny had noted, the wounds were shallow. If he nudged the arrow shaft in one direction, the thin border of blood tracing around the wound leaked into drops that spilled down his arm. After careful examination of his hand wound, he skillfully guided the tip of his knife into the border of reddened flesh, using small and precise motions to gently cut through thin ribbons of skin until he outlined the arrow head. Occasionally, he tweaked the arrow here and there, testing its give and determining where else he needed to cut until it was removed entirely. He tossed the arrow to his side and promptly washed his hands with the waters of the river, applying soap feverishly to the wound for at least a minute before rinsing it. He repeated the same cycle of lavish application and rinsing before he patted the wound dry with a towel Johnny had handed him and sealed it with a ribbon of fresh bandages. Admittedly, he knew that his wound treatment had some glaring flaws that may reappear as an infection in the near future, but he couldn’t hope for much more within the broad wilderness. He next moved his attention to the harder part. From his angle, he did not feel confident that he could precisely cut around the arrow head and release it without cutting too much into his arm. Johnny plopped down from his horse just beside him and examined the cuts for himself. Some drops of blood had seeped through the wound hole, but much of it had dried up after riding for so long. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Johnny, do me a favor</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” He began, washed, cleaned, and dried off the blade of his knife then offered it to him. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>I can’t see the entire wound from my vantage point. I need you to cut around the arrowhead and remove the arrow. Just like this--</span>
  </em>
  <span>” He waved the knife around in his hands to gesture around the border of skin surrounding the wooden arrow shaft. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Slowly and carefully. Don’t go in too deep and help me bandage the wound when you’re done.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Johnny stared at him incredulously. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>You can’t be serious. I’m not sure that I won’t make it worse.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>I trust you.</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Gyro held his gaze for several moments, took one of his hands, placed the handle of the knife against his palm, and gently nudged his fingers to curl and close around it. Johnny couldn’t figure out if Gyro intended to make his heart skip a few beats or not, but regardless, the sudden intimacy of their little moment together, behind the stable and away from the prying eyes of other travelers and the stable hands, left him with a dry mouth and a quickening heart. He didn’t show it on his face, however, and instead, nodded, took the blade from him and carefully inspected the arrow. If he nudged the shaft in any direction, a few more drops of blood seeped through and ran down Gyro’s arm, so he left it in place as much as he could while guiding the tip of the blade into the line of flesh around it. Perhaps he had accidentally struck a nerve with the way Gyro had stiffened and repeated, “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Remember, just the tip, and try to keep it as close to the arrow as possible.</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Johnny kept up his work, tentative yet gradual, until he completed the lap around the arrow and tested its give. Blood still seeped out, but the arrow loosened considerably within the flesh, so he slowly dislodged it then tossed it onto the ground. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Those bokoblins were gross,</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Gyro suddenly continued with a small laugh. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>They look like overgrown, ugly pigs. I thought I even saw one pick its nose then eat whatever slimy thing came out.</span>
  </em>
  <span>” </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Johnny wrinkled his freckled nose and groaned. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Absolutely disgusting.</span>
  </em>
  <span>” </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Do you think if we faced them with fire arrows, we could roast them like pigs? How would you like to try some bokoblin bacon, eh?</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>...There’s not enough money in the world to get me to eat that.</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Johnny answered with a deadpan face and balked at the very image of that meal from hell from forming a gut-turning scene in his mind. As with his hand, Gyro thoroughly cleaned the open wound and handed Johnny another ribbon of bandages. Following Gyro’s instruction, Johnny dressed the wound and tied the bandages tightly, but he found himself falling into the mental trap of replaying the image of Gyro in pain when the arrows had struck him. Along with the scene, the single persistent thought of </span>
  <em>
    <span>what if</span>
  </em>
  <span> rushed into his head--</span>
  <em>
    <span>what if</span>
  </em>
  <span> he had been slower to react to the bokoblin’s attack? </span>
  <em>
    <span>What if</span>
  </em>
  <span> he never realized that the bokoblin was hiding in the tree in the first place? </span>
  <em>
    <span>What if</span>
  </em>
  <span> those arrows struck Gyro a little more to the right? He wouldn’t allow himself to imagine the awful moment of witnessing his husband die in the wilderness from an onslaught of these filthy demons in a world reigned by fear of an unseen enemy.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>With too many unanswered questions and overwhelming doubt and anxiety of what lies before them, Johnny announced his retirement for the night. But he didn’t sleep much. Tossing and turning around on an already uncomfortable bed of straw and cloth, he barely slept more than four hours until he gave up completely with an aggravated sigh and turned to face Gyro. On the other hand, Gyro slept still on his side facing Johnny with his small teddy bear in front of him, and Johnny watched the slow and deep rhythm of his chest expanding and deflating with every breath. Yet, his eyes lingered on the visible bandages on his arm and hand. Just one bokoblin made the difference. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Just one</span>
  </em>
  <span>. They were fortunate, in a way, to dispatch the others as quickly as they did and flee in one piece, but if he had even been a second later, the bokoblin may have fired a third arrow to finish Gyro. As expected, he anticipated that his eyes would begin to well up with tears, and when he closed them and waited for sleep, one tear had escaped, rolled over his nose and splashed onto the pillow.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>~*~*~*</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>At the first morning light, Gyro lifted himself out of bed and revisited the riverbank to peel off the bandage on his left hand and rewash the wound. Fortunately, the blood clotted at the surface, preventing more blood loss, and the pain dulled slightly. Still, he treated the wound as if it was still fresh lest he accidentally rip off the forming scab. Johnny was still sound asleep; getting him up on most mornings took a little bit of work, so after rebandaging his wounds, he wasted no time in preparing coffee at the campfire provided by the stable. While the pot heated up, he returned into the stable hut briefly to nudge Johnny awake, but he could sense that he was merely feigning sleep. The redness around his eyes and the fact that the blankets were pulled up to cover most of his body, up to his nose, told him as much. Johnny, who was still alert and merely held his eyes shut, felt the stable bed dip underneath Gyro’s weight and the blanket peel away from his face. The exposure of his cheek to the sudden chill coaxed him to open his eyes and stare at the empty bed in front of him even as he felt Gyro remove strands of blonde hair away from his face. “Johnny, look at me.” Reluctantly, after a few seconds of silence, he moved his eyes and shifted his body to the right to look up at his husband and witnessed an expression that resembled disappointment and suspicious concern. He had at first averted Gyro’s eyes after seeing that concern reflected within them, and eventually mustered the strength to bring himself back. Gyro had furrowed his brow, and those warm green eyes seemed to see right through to his heart when he met his gaze. “Talk to me. What’s bothering you?” Johnny glanced around past Gyro towards the other beds and the stable keeper’s desk, but no one moved within his line of sight. “They’re all still asleep. Don’t worry about them.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“About,” Johnny started weakly, feeling a lump in his throat, so he swallowed and continued. “About yesterday, when you,” Gyro nodded, as if encouraging him to continue, but he had stopped speaking and bit his bottom lip.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Yesterday. What about yesterday?” He noted the way in which Johnny glanced down to his left arm and lower to his hand, and he understood just what had burdened his heart. “You mean when those bokoblins attacked? It’s alright. You and I made it out together, and my wounds are healing.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s not it, Gyro,” His voice had cracked softly, and Gyro could hear his hidden tears waiting for the chance to fall. A few seconds later, as Johnny shook his head on the pillow, a few of those tears did escape and rolled past his ears into his hair. “That’s not--you could have </span>
  <em>
    <span>died</span>
  </em>
  <span> back there. If I had just been a second too late.” Gyro remained reverently silent as he watched the tears fall from Johnny’s eyes. “I can’t, I can’t keep doing this, Gyro. I can’t keep waiting around for this apocalypse to come. Sure, we survived yesterday, but who can say we won’t fall into a bigger trap today? What if they wound you even more? Or even...worse?” He slammed his eyes shut when his vision blurred with a steady wall of tears. “I can’t take it. The Calamity is coming for all of us, and the last thing I’d want is for it to kill you.” Gyro wiped away his tears with his thumbs while listening to the rest of his confession and gazing into his wearied eyes. In the heavy silence of the moments that followed, his tears had slowed and the crushing weight of the burden on his heart dissolved into the ether.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Do you remember the vows we gave to each other on our wedding day?” For the moment, Gyro’s quiet words restored some strength in Johnny, and the feeling of the world and people around him had faded away. In that one moment, they felt as if they were the only ones in the room.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“What?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Our vows. Do you remember what I said to you?” Taking his silence as a chance to continue, Gyro spoke softly, confident that the other guests won’t wake from the sound of his voice, “I had promised you that I’d follow you anywhere and protect you, and you had done the same. I can’t say what will happen in the future, but if we stay close to each other, we’ll live to see the next day.” He placed a hand on Johnny’s blanketed body and searched for one of his hands; when he found one, he kept his hand there and leaned in a little closer. “I’ll see you through this Calamity so we can grow old together. I promised you that much, and I don’t intend on going back on my word.” Speechless, Johnny only nodded and relished in the comfort of his husband being so near to him. With the mounting pressure to prepare for the advent of the Calamity increasing every day, intimate moments between them were scarce, so they wished that time would stop so that they could bask in each other’s attention just a little while longer. Gyro leaned forward again until his face hovered above Johnny’s, their lips just inches away; close enough that they can feel each other’s warm breaths and the enticing pull of gravity itching to close the distance. “Don’t worry, Johnny.” Gyro whispered with a tender expression. “Everything’s going to be okay. It’ll work out.” Their faces hovering so close together, Johnny felt gravity pulling him up and towards Gyro; before he could close the gap, however, Gyro swiftly pulled away, stood upright from the bed and tossed Johnny his day clothes. “Now get dressed. It’s just about dawn, so we’ll be leaving soon.” Defeated yet relieved, Johnny let his head sink back into the pillow and closed his eyes for a few more winks of sleep. He figured after his confession that Gyro would allow him at least that.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Meanwhile, Gyro returned to the campfire at the front of the stable where his coffee kettle awaited him. He poured the hot dark liquid into two cups, mixed in a copious amount of cane sugar and returned to their beds. Johnny had fallen back to sleep, or maybe he was faking it again? Regardless, Gyro was confident this next trick would rouse him again and keep him awake. He held one cup of steaming coffee near Johnny’s face and waved it around carefully, just enough for the aroma to waft into his nose. In no time, his nose twitched and his eyes fluttered open. Just as he reached for the coffee, Gyro moved the cup away from him and sat on his own bed. “Nuh-uh, you have to wake up and be dressed first if you want to enjoy this.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re so cruel.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Gyro grinned at him, “Love you too.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Within the next hour, they departed from the stable on the road towards the southwest and soon after adjusted their path to the west towards Lake Kolomo. The dirt road forked again about a mile and a half away from the lake, and at that position, they chose the left road. Their next destination was Gatepost Town situated alongside the looming sheer cliffs of the Great Plateau. As far as they understood, mostly religious folks completed the long trek up the countless flights of stairs to live, work, and pray upon the Great Plateau. Through most of the year, outsiders were forbidden to climb to the top, but only during the Carnival of Time, held once a year, would the doors open to pilgrims. Gatepost Town was built solely for this purpose--Hylian guards worked and lived within this small settlement of brick and dirt dust to protect the only entrance to the Great Plateau and process the thousands of pilgrims who make the trek every year from the four corners of Hyrule. Further down the path, just past the Forest of Time lay the Outpost then the Eastpost to the slight northeast where more Hylian Guards lived and kept a sharp watch over the southern stretch of Central Hyrule. Both posts were a major intersection of common travel, so merchants who sought to capitalize on such an opportunity uprooted their lives to settle in these small towns, and they became pleased to find the heavy traffic of wayward travelers ready to greet them. Consequently, the chain of three towns located within roughly three miles of each other rivaled even Hyrule Castle Town in its trade deals and opportunities for growth. Proudly, the guards, mayors, and resident merchants named this strip the “Castle Town of the South.” It would also be the last opportunity to stock up on supplies as the closest settlement was at least a day and a half away at the Highland Stable, approximately another five miles south-southeast of the Great Bridge of Hylia. They had at least a full day of traveling ahead of them to even reach that bridge.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>After five more hours of traveling at a steady cycle of trotting and walking by horse, they arrived at the first bastion of Gatepost Town. There, soldiers, clad in white armor and silver chainmail shirts and armed with golden contoured weapons only created in Castle Town specifically for Hylian soldiers of common rank, bustled in and out of the bastions ahead. Some of them remained in their positions on the balconies of fortified, two-story buildings on the edges of the town and kept their eyes focused on the horizon. Some of the ground guards greeted them as they arrived and directed them to the south. Across the flat dirt road, Johnny spotted the archway leading to the stairs that led upwards to the Great Plateau. The wall of cliffs stood tall, stretching approximately 460 meters into the sky, and the surface of the plateau expanded for ten miles across thick forests, flat plains, cliffs, and rough mountain terrain--a microcosm for the Hyrule Kingdom. The secrets these walls held ignited his curiosity; of course, he’s never visited the top of the plateau, especially after the accident that had paralyzed his legs. And he didn’t vocalize much interest in visiting it either--the stairs were the only way to the top, so unless he could sprout wings and soar up there, he would remain on the ground below.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Gyro, conversely, had visited the top of the Great Plateau once a year as part of the Zeppeli family tradition, starting when he turned thirteen years old. There, they visited the grand Temple of Time to pray to the Goddess, and on the way back to the stairs after they completed their pilgrimage, Gyro looked towards his left to the wall of trees that marked the border of the Forest of Spirits. Perhaps it was his boyhood tendencies that urged him forward, but the forest still tempted him to break away from his familial group and enter the wilderness. However, the sounds of his father passing him on his right followed by the rest of his family funneled his thoughts to reconsider the idea. His father’s calm voice echoed from the back of his mind: that forest was sacred land, and he may be cursed if he ventures too far into it. In the end, he gave up the notion of exploring that forest and followed his group down the stairs to leave the plateau. Since then, he had adopted his family’s routine of directly visiting the Temple of Time, praying during the ceremonial rites, and leaving the plateau on the same route they used to enter. Every year, this pattern was strictly followed lest they offend the religious communities who maintained and blessed the land. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The princess frequently visited to investigate the shrines in the four corners of the plateau, including the one he remembers sitting next to the entryway at the top of the plateau. He expected the doors to open and a monk to walk out on the round platform before the door, but it never did much other than resemble an impressive artsy boulder. The princess even talked about a tower hidden there, but he couldn’t recall seeing anything like that. Apparently, the highest platform of the tower had been buried in a shallow cave by boulders over thousands of years. There was even this bizarre wall embedded into a cliff face about a mile away from the Temple of Time. The swirling designs carved into the rock surrounding the wall match the same design seen on the shrines according to her findings she diligently recorded in her journals, so she had reasoned that it was another one of those dormant shrines. But the next question remained clear: how does it open? She believed strongly that the Sheikah Slate fixed at Gyro’s hip was the answer to that one burning question, and so she appointed both him and his cousin Caesar, a slightly older fellow who often hiked between Kakariko Village and its sister Hateno Village in the name of research, training, and romance, as part of her personal investigation team.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Johnny may have been skeptical of the power entrusted to the current generation from the distant ancestors of the Zeppeli family, but Gyro shared the princess’s belief that the tools left to them from thousands of years ago could quell the Calamity once more. To that end, he agreed to meet the princess at the top of the Great Plateau in another week’s time, soon after he finished his current expedition. As a part of the Joestar lineage, descendants of the original hero who had slain the Calamity in the legends, it was important for Johnny to be part of the investigation, and Gyro would bring him to the top, even if it meant that he had to carry him for the entire trip.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shortly following their departure from Gatepost Town, they rode around the curved border of the Forest of Time and arrived in a lane of shops waiting for them at the Outpost. After replenishing their supplies and taking a short break to prepare for the long road ahead, they continued their adventure briefly to the east until they reached the halfway point between the Outpost and East Post and turned to the south that led them past Scout’s Hill, which sprawled for an incredible few miles on their left. Flanking them to their right were a few other much smaller plateaus created by solid white rocks jutting up from the earth, and about a mile away from Lake Hylia was another mini plateau with a top wide enough to serve as a sufficient lookout base. In fact, it wasn’t uncommon to spot Hylian guards at the top of this plateau to monitor the traffic to and from the lake. By the time the sun had started to set and the earth darkened with the shadows of the early evening, they spotted the grand arch of the Bridge of Hylia in the distance. “Ah, finally,” Gyro called out when he saw the structure clearly in the distance. “The Bridge of Hylia is right over there. It can’t be more than a thirty minutes’ ride.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Are we camping at this bridge or going forward?” Johnny followed and watched the blurry lights of the torches of the bridge arch twinkle in the growing darkness. There must be some Hylian guards stationed there as well.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s not too dark yet; We can push our horses to cross the entire bridge before we make camp. The bridge floor is flat, and plenty of torches line the edges.” And so they continued on towards the bridge and crossed under the arch just as most of the sun disappeared beyond the highlands to the west. The Bridge of Hylia spanned across the entire length of the vast Lake Hylia below for a little under two miles. Built entirely of brick and cement, the bridge was renowned throughout the world for being the pride of the Faron Region. Tourists from many subregions across Hyrule and even from kingdoms beyond Hyrule’s borders journeyed for countless miles just to witness the enormous expanse of the bridge. Standing at 75 meters above the lake’s surface, the bridge’s construction lasted well over several centuries and completed well over a few centuries ago, and its upkeep remained within the hands of specialized guards trained in masonry--the same ones stationed at each of the grand arches. A series of arches jumping from one square-based column based in the water to the next lined the underside of the bridge and faithfully supported it even after years of exposure to the elements. To accommodate travelers, the previous generation of guards installed a water fountain intended to be used by the horses and other beasts of burden expected to travel through the area at the center plaze in the precise heart of the bridge.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Proceeding at a trot from 75 meters atop the lake, they leisurely observed the expanse of the lake around them in the dim twilight. The weather had cleared since they left the Outpost, and they could identify Hylia Island and its children islets poking out from the surface of the water to their right, and a few other smaller islands resting just about the water’s surface on their left, a bit to the southeast. The rest of the lake--about three quarters of its overall size--remained empty. Hylians seldom fished down there--many of their fishing communities preferred to hunt in the seas at the eastern and southern borders of the kingdom--leaving the lake mostly to the Zorans who easily trafficked through the Hylia and Zora Rivers over several miles every day to catch their fill. Since Johnny had never seen a Zoran before, Gyro told him a story of when he was a boy playing in the Lanayru Wetlands. He had seen a few of them swimming in the Rutala River to the northeast as easily and gracefully as fish. They were humanoid creatures, resembling a hybrid of a fish with a Hylian, with soft and wet scaly skin, long, elegant fins emerging from their forearms, and a great cranial fin extending from their heads and dangling down their backs. Truly, they sounded alien to Johnny, but they were also close allies with the King of Hyrule--the Zoran Princess was even selected to pilot the Divine Beast Vah Ruta. Regardless of how alien they looked, he understood from Gyro that they weren’t enemies and would be invaluable allies to their cause.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>About ten minutes into their trek across the bridge, the waters of the lake to their right suddenly erupted into a large crown of droplets that surrounded the body of a mighty serpentine dragon. Farosh emerged from the waters of Lake Hylia and snaked her way into the early evening air like a lightning bolt suspended and traveling in reverse direction to the heavens above. The bright neon yellow glow of her body attracted their attention immediately like moths to a flame, and for a few moments, they halted their horses and stared speechlessly, in awe of the great size of the beast. It easily surpassed the length of the Bridge of Hylia, and it seemed that its body endlessly slid out from the water below, but if it was a monster evoked by the incoming Calamity, they were powerless to do much about it. Gyro broke out of his trance to reach for the Sheikah Slate when he remembered the dusty images on those crusty pages of the book William had kept around for decades. Although the details were fuzzy, the basic shape was the same--the body of the fabled dragon was long, like a snake’s, possessed six legs, as this one had revealed, and something adorned its head. Perched upon Farosh’s forehead stretched a single tough horn, shaped jaggedly much like a lightning bolt. There was no mistaking it--they had found one of those dragons! </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>While Farosh curved its path in the sky and leaned towards the bridge, sailing towards it at little more than a snail’s pace it seemed, Gyro switched into the camera function of the Sheikah Slate and quickly snapped a photograph that encompassed the dragon’s head, horn, and just a small fraction of its body leading to its first set of legs. “Okay, you have your picture now,” Johnny spoke quietly, his eyes never leaving the towering dragon sailing through the sky towards the bridge. “We should go back, before this thing sees us. We can cross the bridge tomorrow.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“No.” Gyro responded firmly and hooked the Sheikah Slate onto his belt then dismounted his horse.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“What do you think you’re going to do?” Johnny spoke more forcefully and felt his face grow heated with stress in the cool night air. “Get back on your horse, Gyro! We can’t possibly defeat something that huge! The best we can do now is run.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“There’s something else that I need to confirm, and fate presented the perfect opportunity to me.” He unclasped one of his steel balls and held it firmly in his palm. Before Johnny’s own eyes, Gyro sprinted forward at an angle to the edge of the bridge as the dragon inched closer, and at his top running speed, he leapt clean off and over the waters below.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Gyro! What in the hell are you doing?” Johnny approached the edge but stopped when he felt the winds around him converge into a massive updraft which filled Gyro’s cape and lifted him upwards, even closer to the dragon. The same winds that whistled and whirled around Johnny frightened Slow Dancer to back away from the edge and veer towards the closer bridge arch. As the winds carried Gyro closer to the magnificent body of the dragon still hovering towards the bridge, small balls of electricity wafted from her body and drifted through the air, unimpeded by the strong updraft. Despite this looming threat, he waited patiently until the dragon drifted within his range then he threw his spinning steel ball. It whirled past the wall of electrical orbs and struck the dragon’s body just above the shoulder. However, Farosh seemed unimpressed, even ignoring Gyro’s presence entirely and continued to sail over the bridge, and this pushed another rush of wind towards Johnny. Fortunately, he maintained a firm grip on Slow Dancer’s reins and lowered his head until the blast had subsided, all the while praying that he wouldn't be blown off of the bridge entirely. Using his cape as a make-shift parachute, Gyro descended through the air, flying past the electrical orbs and towards the small ball of light fired from the dragon’s body. He plummeted feet-first into the dark waters below, and when the winds weakened around Johnny, he looked for Gyro in the air and in the water but found only the lingering feeling of dread when he looked upon shadows and empty air. Kept in suspension from the whirlwind of events, he naturally thought the worst had happened and called out for his husband from atop the bridge. And like warm butter, some of his worries melted away when he spotted Gyro’s head resurfacing from the dark water below and moving towards a glowing object a few meters ahead of him.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Wasting no time, Johnny scanned for any trace of lowground and spotted a slope of ground to the left of the grand arch leading down to the lakeside bank; more importantly, a wooden dock jutted out from that bank into the lake. He directed Slow Dancer to gallop back to the arch he had passed to enter the bridge, with Valkyrie following behind, and descended the slope just in time to meet Gyro, swimming towards and lifting himself onto the end of the dock. He noticed a faint glowing golden light emanating from one of his hands as well as the steel ball resting in the other, but that hardly mattered compared to the relief he felt upon seeing Gyro alive and well with no apparent wounds from his impromptu dive. While returning the steel ball to its place at his hip, he walked forward, took the reins of Valkyrie and mounted his steed. “What the fuck was that? What did you risk your life for?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Just this.” He opened his palm to Johnny and the soft glow of a dragon scale radiated forth as a sphere of gentle light with about half of the luminosity of the torches lining their path along the slope. “William mentioned that our ancestors once used the scales of these dragons to cook some amazing meals.” Johnny fell behind Gyro’s pace, once again incredulous and shaking his head at the absurdity of it all.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“So,” He paused, rubbed his eyes with his thumb and index finger and stared at Gyro’s back while they climbed the slope to reenter the bridge. “So, you literally would risk your life just to obtain that dragon scale and cook a meal?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t think you understand,” He continued, nonchalantly while absentmindedly rubbing a thumb over the smooth curve of the scale. “It’s not just </span>
  <em>
    <span>any</span>
  </em>
  <span> dish, Johnny. My ancestors cooked a dish with this scale for the ancient hero. If we get it right, we could recreate a dish that they used to cook. Do you know what this means, Johnny?” He was met with silence--his companion’s usual sign of skepticism--and he continued anyway. “If I can cook a dish properly using this scale for you and your relatives, you all will be powered up enough to be in the best shape to fight the Calamity. It’s a small purpose, but it may make a difference in the tide of battle. I’ll save this scale for when we return to Kakariko. I only have this one so I’ll need to get it right the first time.” They reached the top of the slope and steered their horses to a place several meters in front of the grand arch they had once passed. Instead of pushing their horses to the far side of the bridge, they would make camp just off to the side of the entryway and leave at the first morning light.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re crazy for doing that death-defying stunt,” Johnny spoke and reflected on the jolt of fear that suspended his heart for a moment when he couldn’t locate Gyro for after he had plummeted into the waters. “But this--this is a whole new plateau for you.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“But you still love me, anyway.” He responded with a grin and ignored Johnny’s stare as he hummed a tune and started working on their campfire. The dragon and sudden rush of wind had vanished as mysteriously as it had erupted before their eyes. Underneath the dim light of the river of stars stretching and swirling beyond the clouds like strings of pearls, Johnny leaned back into Gyro’s arms while they sat in front of the fire, sipped tea created from the boiled leaves of blue nightshades mixed with a spoonful of courser bee honey, and listened to the chorus of crickets chirping and the crackling embers of the fire.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Where do we go next?” Johnny asked and held the map out in front of them. “The nearest settlement looks to be the Highland Stable. It should be about half a day’s journey.” He ended his thought abruptly when Gyro wrapped one arm around him and pulled him closer until his chest pressed against his back. After climbing that slope following his brief dip in the lake, Gyro had stripped himself of most of his clothes and laid them out to dry. In the meantime, he changed into his night clothes and a fresh set of undergarments, but these were the last of his dry clothes. He notoriously packed lightly, often leaving behind objects that could easily be replaced by the natural resources of the wilderness--all to reduce the burden placed on Valkyrie to prepare for emergencies. After all, Jotaro had recounted multiple eyewitness accounts that bokoblins had learned to tame the wild horses around Hyrule; thus, it became paramount that the minimal amount of weight was placed on his steed to make a quicker escape.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“It would be better if we made a beeline through Faron Woods until we reach the Lakeside Stable. The journey will probably last a day and a half, but our overall travel time will be shorter. Trekking to the Highlands Stable would be a waste of time. Besides,” He leaned in close to Johnny’s ear, deliberately attracting his attention and causing the tips of his ears to flush red. He lowly whispered into Johnny’s ear, “I’d much rather spend some more alone time with you, in the jungle, where no one can see us.” With those words smoothly sliding into his head, Johnny suddenly developed awareness of every point of physical contact between him and Gyro. From the way his arm seemed to gradually tighten around his waist to his solid chest and abdomen pressing against his back, he felt everything and quietly mused about these sensations without noticing that he returned to lightly biting and chewing on his bottom lip. Time stretched the next seconds out into minutes; he felt his own body heating up as if he was placed into an oven, and as his heartbeat picked up, so did his breathing. This man, the man that he loved the most, had mastered the art of connecting with him that it became a little embarrassing and annoying to still be brought to yearn for him even when they sat so close together. Quietly, Johnny’s breath hitched a bit coupled with his body stiffening and relaxing, and he released a refreshing sigh when the patches of Gyro’s beard tickled his cheek. “When was the last time we’ve gotten this close? I can’t even remember.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Neither can I. But...in the woods? Can’t it wait until we return home at least?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“But that’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>so long</span>
  </em>
  <span> from now, and the Goddess knows when we’ll next have each other to ourselves.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Even so, it doesn’t seem safe to let our guards down like that, and outside of all places.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“It wouldn’t be our first time.” Johnny could practically feel Gyro’s smirk. In fact, he would bet the rest of the money he had brought with him that it was there. Gyro even kissed the reddened rim of the top of his ear before he turned to the side and yawned. “I’m retiring for the night. See you in my dreams.” Johnny rolled his eyes at that last statement, but he couldn’t stop a slight, almost imperceptible, smile from creeping across his lips when he glanced back at Gyro descending into a sandwich of blankets. His husband had a talent of falling asleep right away, which he envied in a way, but for this night, he had felt a little more secure than usual and took his place laying down next to him. The fire had smoldered into smoke and dry ash, enveloping them in darkness, and he found that he too fell asleep quickly when he next closed his eyes.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>At the dawn of the next morning, the guards stationed atop the bridge’s arch looked on to the horizon as Johnny and Gyro rode underneath them and towards the far end of the bridge on their way to the Lakeside Stable at the heart of the Faron Jungle.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. The Dragon of Fire and Power</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Following their return from Lake Hylia and the Faron Jungle, Gyro and Johnny are once again called to another adventure to the rocky northwest corner of Hyrule. They pursue the tail of a second fabled dragon, one born of fire, while the clock of Calamity DIO's arrival ticks down. Along the way, an old rival of Johnny's discovers them, bringing with him haunting memories of the past Johnny had thought he left behind for good.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Chapter 2 is here! This chapter is meant to be fairly straightforward in chronology--it occurs exclusively after chapter 1 in the general scheme of events. Calamity DIO and his underlings never rest, and neither will Gyro and Johnny! Those poor fellows...</p><p>I name drop many places in Breath of the Wild's Hyrule in this chapter, so if you're ever confused, please check out this interactive map: https://www.zeldadungeon.net/breath-of-the-wild-interactive-map/. This is the same map that I reference when writing these chapters. As for rating, this chapter features more mild cussing and some descriptions of violence, so I think a T rating is still appropriate.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Remarkable!” William exhaled a breath of satisfaction and held the Sheikah Slate up to gawk at the crystal clear photograph that Gyro had taken. The bold neon yellow-green glow of the dragon Farosh filled most of the screen and imparted energy into his spirit. He simply could not take his eyes away from Hyrule’s first true-to-life image of a fabled dragon. Consequently, he handled the Sheikah Slate with the utmost care with one hand firmly curled around the handle and the other framing the rectangular edge. “Absolutely remarkable. Where did you find this beast?”</p><p>   </p><p>    “Lake Hylia, on the bridge.” Gyro answered with a proud smile. He and Johnny had returned from their long trek into the Faron Jungle in the middle of last night. Although Gyro had itched to share his discovery with William and his father, Johnny reminded him that they were mostly likely asleep. If they hadn’t pushed their horses to travel past sunset to expedite the final stretch of the journey and instead had spent one more night underneath the stars, he could have scratched that itch upon their arrival. Eager to jump on the next opportunity and hardly burdened from the fatigue of traveling great distances on horseback, he entered his father’s study promptly in the late morning with the Sheikah Slate in hand. He even left Johnny behind on their bed where he slept like a log buried  underneath a sanctuary of blankets. William tilted the Sheikah Slate towards Gregorio and spoke ravishly over the fruit of his work--his translation of the legends depicting the dragons. Gregorio beheld the image, but his stone face expression hardly moved; the light emitted from the screen highlighted the frown on his lips and the wrinkles trenching around his mouth, eyes, and forehead. Gyro had expected to see something, anything on his father’s face that might hint at approval, but instead, he realized slight disappointment crept into his heart.</p><p> </p><p>    “Excellent, excellent!” William chimed when he looked over at Gyro. “Well done! What did it do when you saw it? Did it attack you?” At that, Gregorio lifted his eyes from the screen towards his son’s face and waited patiently in cold silence. When Gyro recalled his father’s grim warning of the monsters lurking beyond each corner throughout the kingdom, he carefully omitted the details of his skirmishes and merely brushed off his wounds as accidents--something had distracted him, diverting his attention away from the ground at his feet, and he fittingly slid on wet, unstable soil somewhere in the jungle and landed on sharp rocks. He knew his father would rescind his permission to leave the Necluda Region, and the local mountainous area around the village entirely, if he had discovered the truth, but his excuse proved to be enough to cover himself. For now.</p><p> </p><p>    “No. It ignored us when it dove back into the lake.” He tiptoed around mentioning those electric orbs that wafted from the body of the dragon and drifted close enough to make his body hair stand fully erect. The mere thought of it recalled the tingling sensation of the stray electrical energy grazing across his arms and weaving through the longer hair on his head. William nodded along and closed his eyes to indulge in the image of the vast serpentine body glowing like a lightning bolt precariously suspended in the air over the bridge and crashing into the water. If the size was correct, it would surely be large enough to split a mountain into two or fight the Calamity altogether, although the textbooks he had translated made no such mention of dragons assisting the hero nor the Royal Family. </p><p> </p><p>    “And it had appeared on its own?”</p><p> </p><p>    “Yes. It also left me this,” He opened his left palm and presented the softly glowing dragon scale. Indoors, the golden glow was considerably muted, and the elder Zeppelis leaned over the artifact to inspect the delicate curves and soft gleam. They concluded that since Gyro had held it in his hands without visible pain, it must be void of electrical power. Despite that, they hesitated to touch it. “It’s a gift from the dragon--a scale from its body. Our ancestors used it in their cooking to help the hero, so I think we can do the same.” His father’s attention snapped to him.</p><p> </p><p>    “Did you take this scale from a sacred creature?” With a near-permanent frown, he looked on when Gyro responded in the affirmative.</p><p> </p><p>    “If it would help our cause--”</p><p> </p><p>    “These are no mere dragons, Gyro.” Gregorio held up his open palm and silenced his son. “They are spirits--servants to the three Golden Goddesses who are credited with creating the world. They are <em> not </em> to be hunted like common beasts. William and I had expected that you would simply observe the dragon, should you find one, and not to interfere.”</p><p> </p><p>    “Well,” William interrupted and gently took the scale in his hand. It felt smooth to the touch against the pad of his thumb and evoked a sense of calm. “Given the current circumstances, this may indeed be what the Goddess had intended for us.” He turned to Gyro, forehead creases wrinkled when he raised his eyebrows in anticipation. “Have you found the other dragons?” Gyro shook his head and announced that he intended to venture north to Akkala with Johnny to find the Spring of Power and the next dragon. The Akkala Region laid hidden far to the northeast, nestled beyond the towering cliffs of the smooth blue mountains of Upland Zorana and the rugged red rock of the Eldin Canyon. Yet, Johnny had asked to remain in the village for at least a few days to recoup and mentally brace himself to live in the wild for a month or more. In the end, there was very little Gyro could do to convince him otherwise. “Let’s prioritize studying the dragons themselves. Take this Sheikah Slate to the Tanagar Canyon on the side of the Tabantha Tundra, instead.” He lifted the slate from the desk and handed it back to him. “A few of the locals have reported strong winds rushing above that valley just before seeing fleeting mirages of flame in the snowy distance. According to our ancestor’s ancient texts, there lived a dragon who breathed fire and rode upon stormy winds near that very canyon. And if you do find it, take a picture just as you had before, only this time, do not engage it. We wouldn’t want to push our luck with forces we know very little about.”</p><p> </p><p>    “The scale will remain here,” Gregorio added, received the precious item from William, and placed it into a small wooden box. “And we’ll dispatch men to the Akkala Region to investigate the Spring of Power. Is that understood?”</p><p> </p><p>    Feeling like he was lifted off the hook for a crime that their ancestors might have considered blasphemous, Gyro answered, “Yes, Father.”</p><p> </p><p>~*~*~*</p><p> </p><p>Gyro returned home in the early afternoon; along the way, he noticed a shopkeeper carrying an offering of apples to the small Goddess Statue a stone’s throw away from Lantern Falls, where his father worked. Everyday, she upheld the tradition of placing sweet apples at the feet of the Goddess Statue and scraping off the creeping film of algae and dirt upon the rock in return for continued protection. Recently, her work to maintain both her shop and the statue grew so tiresome that her legs, pulsing with pain from being overworked for long hours each day, frequently kept her awake at night. When word of her exhausted condition spread around the village, her neighbors had gathered together to volunteer and regularly clean the statue. Some had stepped in to offer the fruit to the statue themselves. Their actions had born fruit; the traps they meticulously prepared along the outskirts of the village successfully captured hordes of monsters seeking to swarm through the mountains. As far as Gyro was aware, the most recent attack occurred two weeks ago and ignited fears within the village. The traps rendered the monsters helpless and easily routed, but that horde had been small. Much larger heterogeneous hordes roamed across Hyrule, and whispers carried the fears of the villages around the local mountains. They all understood that it was only a matter of time until those rogue armies of beasts stormed over the mountains and overwhelmed the traps. An assault during the dead of night would be the most opportune time to strike, and while the night guards diligently watched over the two roads into the village, their small range of vision into the blanket of darkness could offer opportunities for a horde to slip pass them. The nightmare had a real chance of inundating the village.</p><p> </p><p>     Indeed, the young Zeppeli’s mind struggled to handle the volume of information and persistent mysteries surrounding the guardians. But the thought of Johnny and his preordained destiny to fight the Calamity always remained at the heart of his concerns. The sullen gaze and clouded light in the young Joestar’s eyes on most days and his quick snap to irritation gave away his crushed heart and burdened mind in the days follow Muhammad Avdol’s revelation of Calamity DIO’s return. The weight of the world on his shoulders was too much for him to handle. A young man of twenty years, he let himself be fooled into thinking that his whole life awaited him after marrying his best friend a year prior. And a single day could seize it all from him. What point was it, then, to keep hope alive in a world that marched closer to death? </p><p> </p><p>     Gyro lingered around Johnny’s tearful confession during their most recent journey to Lake Hylia. The Calamity had tormented him to his breaking point and slowly consumed whatever bit of hope he had left like a sea of black sludge swallowing the earth and all of its pillars of stone and highest mountains. The reddened skin around his icy-blue eyes and flushed cheeks visible during some mornings betray that he had cried during his sleep. He didn’t even attempt to hide it; instead, he hoped that Gyro would not pursue the subject. At first, Gyro theorized that he had simply ruminated on his past, hovering too long over the loss of his immediate familial support and subsequent accident that cost him the use of his legs. His distant relatives--those who were also chosen to stand against the Calamity--visited Kakariko Village infrequently, but they mostly discussed battle preparations or new information of the ancient Sheikah technology from the Zeppeli elders. It was the last thing that Johnny wanted to hear. None of the new information offered to the Joestars even mattered when his thoughts revolved around sparing his husband from a violent fate. ‘<em>The last thing that I’d want to lose is you.</em>’ Gyro remembered those words well; they haunted him like an embarrassing memory, occasionally sobering him when he recalled that pair of sad eyes so filled with fear looking up at him. They had a way of affecting him to make a difference in his direction of thinking, regardless if he realized it. He often recalled feeling warmth and tightness in his chest when he looked into those sad eyes and tried to envision a happier, brighter future for themselves. They would have to fight for it in the coming months, and he intended on protecting Johnny at all costs.</p><p> </p><p>He opened the door to their shared home and crossed through the living room in a beeline for the bedroom. They lived in a modest place built in the traditional Kakarikan fashion from the wood of Rabia Plain to the northeast. The house spanned across one floor, compartmentalized spaciously by walls with wide openings so Johnny could move around easily with little additional help. The living room, consisting of only a low lying coffee table and a few seating stools topped with tied-down cushions, welcomed visitors at the door, and a kitchenette with a small closet pantry, a wood oven made from stone, and a short line of counters connected to the living room at the back right corner of the house. Lastly, tucked in the far left corner of the floor across from the kitchenette was their bedroom. Since he didn’t immediately see Johnny in the kitchen or the living room, he assumed that he still hadn’t left their bed despite the afternoon sun beginning its descent towards the horizon. His husband became notoriously slow in preparing for the day, but in the worst of cases, he usually lifted himself out of bed by nine in the morning. Today, however, felt different. Gyro peered into their bedroom and spotted the tell-tale lump on the mattress underneath the blanket: Johnny probably hadn’t even moved from the spot Gyro had left him in the morning. “Still asleep, huh?” He strolled over to the window next to the bed. He would wake his husband up in one fell swoop; the curtain swept to the side and unleashed a heavy beam of light that shone on Johnny’s entire face. “Rise and shine, Johnny boy. <em>Nyo ho</em>,” With a naughty smile, he watched Johnny flinch and promptly slip his head underneath the pillow, and he hadn’t missed the cute grimace winkling his freckled nose.</p><p> </p><p>     “Asshole.” The cloth of the pillow muffled his voice, and when Gyro tugged at it, he refused to show his face. Stubbornly, he clutched fistfuls of the pillow and resisted his companion, and when Gyro instead moved to snatch the blanket, his torso shot up from the mattress and his arms locked around Gyro’s chest. With his entire upper body weight, he pulled him down onto the bed and seized his opportunity to roll themselves over and plop himself on top of his husband, arms resting beside his head. Truth be told, Gyro allowed himself to crash into the mattress and be pinned by the younger man. The sudden movement had brushed his hat off and sent it tumbling to the floor, but that hardly mattered when he found himself lost within Johnny’s eyes for the umpteenth time. He found a certain beauty in those eyes--the same kind of beauty that he had sought out in nature to better refine his fighting technique. In a way, the particular brand of beauty in those sweet icy-blue colored eyes reminded him that he was home. In the seconds that crawled by, Johnny relished in the fact that he swiped the upper hand from underneath Gyro, but he soon realized that he was clueless on what to do next. And during his bout of confusion, Gyro saw the opportunity to wrestle back control: Johnny hadn’t pinned his arms down, and that would be his fatal mistake. He slipped his hands underneath Johnny’s torso and pushed forcefully at his chest. Of course, Johnny peeled off of him then he wrapped his arms around his torso and guided him to roll over to his back. Unlike his partner, this time, he made sure to pin his arms above his head.</p><p> </p><p>     “How about that?” With a smile beaming arrogance, Gyro beheld one of the most amusing sights he had ever seen--Johnny’s lips pushed forward gently in a pout while those captivating icy-blue eyes glared up at him with defiant helplessness. He felt some pushback from his arms, but he had lost heart in a mere few tries of resisting Gyro.</p><p> </p><p>     “Fuck you,” He whispered, but his hard glare shifted into an expectant gaze. Both men became increasingly aware of their position; their gazes shifted uneasily across their faces, and by a strange gravity emanating between them, they drifted closer and closed the gap. Gyro chuckled in the silence that followed when he sensed Johnny’s nervousness and the way his eyes tended to dip down towards his lips.</p><p> </p><p>     “Well, if you insist...but can I at least get a kiss first?” Johnny swallowed hard and resorted to the habit of biting his bottom lip. Mere inches remained between them, and the lack of body contact sent him craving for anything. He breathed out deeply through his nose, pressed lightly against Gyro’s grip, clenched his fists with the sensation of resistance against his flesh, and shivered with anticipation. Gyro mindfully held himself above Johnny’s torso, and so their arms remained their main point of contact. Johnny had opened his mouth to speak several times but closed it just as much at the humiliating prospect of voicing his most prominent thought. It had felt like ages since he had such an intimate moment with his husband that his body craved--yearned, even--for the smallest act of physical affection. Hand-holding, cuddling, even pecks no longer gave him sufficient satisfaction. He needed more; he longed to experience that physical assurance of the bond they shared and hoped that Gyro would reciprocate the feeling.</p><p> </p><p>     He managed to stammer out, “I want you to kiss me like there’s no tomorrow.” Gyro leaned in closer, as if something had unlocked and set him free, and, against Johnny’s lips, responded,</p><p> </p><p>     “I’d thought you’d never ask.” While their lips met in a series of chaste kisses, his hold on Johnny’s arms weakened, and Johnny swiftly satisfied his craving of pulling Gyro closer to himself. He indulged in the attention and rolled with the increasing intensity of every kiss. Soft lips pressing against his own encouraged Gyro to manhandle him; he pulled off and tossed his hat to the floor when his hand raked through his lighter blonde hair, and he slipped his other hand underneath his shirt. He proved eager to jump right to the point when he impatiently tugged on his shirt, but Johnny distracted him with his mouth before he could move too fast and recaptured him with another volley of smooches. For a few seconds, they broke apart for each with a resounding wet noise when their lips separated, but soon after, they threw themselves towards each other with renewed passion burning hotly in their bodies. In other moments, they paused in precarious restraint and kept their faces close, shifting and turning their heads to caress each other. Johnny breathed a shaky sigh through his nose with comfort and anticipation when he felt the patches of Gyro’s facial hair brush by his cheek preceding little love bites stinging along his jawline and neck. Their noses grazed against each other, and their foreheads touched at times during their few breaks. Drunk with their feverish passion, they kissed and loved unfettered while the world outside passed around them.</p><p> </p><p>~*~*~*~</p><p> </p><p>“That concludes my report, sir.” In front of the door leading out of Gregorio’s office, the scout--a stocky younger man with silvery hair fixed in a bun--that he had dispatched to the Tabantha Region stood as erect as a pillar with his arms folded respectfully behind his back. He held his gaze forward to his masters standing across the room and spoke without a hint of emotion behind his words. Gregorio hummed in acknowledgment as he mulled over the report.</p><p> </p><p>    “Curious as to how the dragons would show themselves to anyone,” William responded and turned away from a lit fireplace. It had become drafty in the house when the curtain of light of the setting sun retreated upwards over the cliffs of the mountainsides and left behind a void for the afternoon blanket of shadows filled. Consequently, the masters of the house and their servants developed a habit of lighting the fireplace in the middle of the afternoon on most days. “Were there any reports of damages or deaths from the dragon’s arrival?”</p><p> </p><p>    “No, sir.”</p><p> </p><p>    “To appear so far away from a spring,” Gregorio mused, “Either the old legends have shown their cracks, or there must be something in that place that has drawn the dragon’s attention. A trigger, even.”</p><p> </p><p>    “I believe that’s close to the truth,” William added and dismissed the scout. “In another tome that I’ve read, a shrine dedicated to the Goddess has been mentioned a total of 52 times in just one chapter. It may have heavy historical significance in the oldest of practices worshipping the Goddess. Perhaps this dragon has resonated with the power contained therein and has appeared in the physical world.”</p><p> </p><p>    “Did it mention any location?”</p><p> </p><p>    “The text was mostly incomprehensible, but I can say with certainty that we’re looking for a decayed structure at the end of a deep valley. The only place I can think of in the present day is Tanagar Canyon.”</p><p> </p><p>    “If that’s the case, it could be a place of great importance to Her Royal Highness. Our time is running thin; we’ll send a party to investigate the Akkala spring. Relay this to my son today: I want him to make the trek to Tanagar Canyon and investigate this forgotten shrine instead of Tabantha Village.”</p><p> </p><p>    “That journey is far, Gregorio. Are you becoming more comfortable with the idea of your son venturing far from home?” He half turned towards him with a knowing smile on his lips. “And the road is mired by those foul creatures.”</p><p> </p><p>    “In times of necessity,” Gregorio began in the tone of a professor reciting a memorized lecture for the thousandth time. “Risk-taking is appropriate. We must not delay any longer--the Calamity will not wait until we are better equipped to handle it. My son has shown promise of carrying out his duty as a servant to the Royal Family. This will be but another test of his ability to lead and conduct research.” William hummed in the affirmative.</p><p> </p><p>    “And that young Joestar will benefit as well. You may have noticed, but he has been alarmingly hesitant in embracing his destiny, unlike the others. Gyro may also be the key to draw that strength outwards.” He made his way to the door. “I’ll go and relay the message to him now.”</p><p>   </p><p>    “When you return, we will discuss leading the expedition to the Akkala Region.”</p><p> </p><p>    “Understood.” He slipped through the doorway and closed the door behind him, leaving Gregorio alone in the room. In the silence of his office occasionally broken by the crackling flames of the fireplace, he stood up from his chair and turned towards a framed map of Hyrule Kingdom nailed to the wall next to his desk. It would certainly be a long journey to Tabantha. If anything, it would take nearly two weeks to complete if they followed the route from the Sahasra Slope that sprawled across Central Hyrule then slipped to the north of Hyrule Ridge. Leaving aside the length of the journey in the very best scenario, Gregorio recognized that the monster hordes were entirely unavoidable. Even within the Great Fairy Forest beyond the slope leading out of the village to the east, monsters have sniffed about, digging their piggish snouts into the dirt in search for a place of refuge. Charged with the protection of the forest and the village that she had personally supervised the construction, the Great Fairy Cotera had never faltered in upholding her duty and smote all traces of organic malice in the forests and mountain ranges surrounding the village. But to hear that she neglected her responsibility after centuries of faithfully keeping it spoke volumes to him about the incoming threat to life. Perhaps the rising power of the Calamity had shaken her nerves and coaxed her into hiding for the inevitable arrival of Hyrule’s nightmare of old? Could the same evil stay the power of the dragons as well? Without her protection, the risk of seeing a monster invasion of his home appeared more likely. Out of necessity, he planned to implement traps in that forest at a later time before he departed for Akkala.</p><p> </p><p>~*~*~*~</p><p> </p><p>The lovers sprawled across the bed, shirtless and satisfied, in the afterglow of their amorous energy and watched the dimming sunlight creep across the walls. How many hours had passed since they laid down with each other? Neither of them could be sure, but the fleeting sunlight indicated that supper time had already arrived. Johnny lounged on his side, having accomplished nothing that afternoon, and rested his head on Gyro’s lap. “Are you seriously planning on leaving the village again? We’ve literally returned just last night. Where are we going now?”</p><p> </p><p>     “To Tabantha Village in the northwest.” At that response, Johnny lifted himself up with his arms supporting him and met Gyro’s gaze.</p><p> </p><p>     “Tabantha Village?” His eyes narrowed in a mixture of disbelief and confusion. “But that’s even farther away than our last trip! Not to mention colder. We’ll be freezing our asses off.” He spotted the knowing smile tugging on Gyro’s face and his hands snaking their way towards his waist; so, he answered by pushing himself into an upright position and grabbed his wrists. “No, stop! I need a break.”</p><p> </p><p>     “Yeah, you do. You were so good.” He beheld that damning blush on the tips of Johnny’s ears and when he felt the grip on his wrists loosen somewhat, he slid his hands to hold his husband’s. Their fingers intertwined as smoothly as silk. “You always know how to treat me well.”</p><p> </p><p>     “Stop,” Johnny’s voice faltered, and in the heat of bright emerald eyes gazing up at him in mischievous pleasure, he faced away. “Stop it.” The bed shifted when Gyro lifted himself to a seated position and scooted a bit closer to him. With one hand gently cupping the side of his face and thumb placed on his chin, he guided Johnny’s face to turn towards him and leaned in until their lips barely touched.</p><p> </p><p>     “It’s alright. I swear, Johnny, it’s alright.” Johnny warmed to the sensation of Gyro closing in for a smooth kiss. He relaxed and leaned forward into his husband, and when they broke apart, they relished in the mutual silence that followed. With their faces hovering close and their mouths brushing across one another, they restrained themselves from the edge of pleasure. Their high dwindled into quiet attention when Gyro recognized the fear rising in Johnny’s eyes. Too many close encounters, he must have been thinking. In the end, they had completed their mission to the Lakeside Stable and the Faron Jungle in one piece but not without a string of skirmishes by monsters lurking in their tree forts or underneath the brush of the fields. For far too long, Johnny had kept his eyes wide open and shirked several hours of sleep for the sake of being vigilant, out of fear to protect himself and his best friend. And he was certain that Gyro recognized the signs of his fatigue--his tired eyes, difficulty in preparing for the day, and persistent agitation. He made it abundantly clear that his greatest anxiety wouldn’t disappear in the short term, but in their most intimate moments, Gyro made the most of it to envelop him in a sense of security, even if it would only carry him through the night. He had promised him that much.</p><p> </p><p>     Johnny’s breathing had deepened, and as much as he wanted to indulge in another kiss, he held back. “Don’t expect that you’re going alone. It’s dangerous out there.”</p><p> </p><p>     “I’m happy to hear that. We can leave in a few days.” Johnny nodded and added some space between them.</p><p> </p><p>     “But I thought you said the next spring was in Akkala. Why are we going in the opposite direction?”</p><p> </p><p>     “We’re searching for another dragon. A fire dragon was rumored to fly near that village in the Tanagar Canyon.” Johnny hesitated before speaking again.</p><p> </p><p>     “...Just a picture this time, right? No reckless jumping off of the cliffside into certain death?” He felt Gyro’s hand reassuringly shift onto his shoulder from caressing his back and somewhat ease the burden from his heart.</p><p> </p><p>     “And leave you behind? I wouldn’t even think of doing something so foolish again.”</p><p> </p><p>     “You better not.” A silent ‘<em> because I love you and I need you </em>’ tagged along after he spoke and remained unheard when he spotted the understanding look in his husband’s eyes. A sharp knock on their front door abruptly pierced through the house and demanded their attention. Gyro caught Johnny even more off-guard by sneaking in a quick peck on his cheek before promptly retrieving his shirt then tossed Johnny his. In a rush, he hadn’t noticed that the shirt landed directly on Johnny’s head, covering his face, and by the time Johnny had removed it, he had buckled his pants then reached the front door, fully clothed, and greeted William. “Damn it, Gyro.” He muttered as he slipped on his shirt and pushed his body to the edge of the bed. When he had moved to live with Gyro, a few engineers among the villagers gifted him a foldable wheelchair designed optimally to cross both flat interiors and the grassy terrain outside of his home. Yet, he preferred to travel upon the back of Slow Dancer outside, so he chiefly used the wheelchair inside of the house. He always kept it folded beside the bed, close enough to easily be reached without Gyro’s help. He unfolded the chair and carefully lifted himself down onto the seat. Through the mark of traditional Zeppeli craftsmanship, the engineers had included default activated brakes that prevented the chair from drifting forward with sudden shifts in weight. What’s more, the brakes could be easily deactivated with the user safely seated--Johnny lifted these brakes by simply slipping a single switch. The feat of technology developed by the Zeppelis extended to him a sense of independence within his own home. With his brakes released, he wheeled himself into the living room where Gyro and their guest spoke at the table.</p><p> </p><p>     “There’s another shrine within Tanagar Canyon?” Gyro repeated and fixed his gaze on William, who nodded in the affirmative.</p><p> </p><p>     “Your father and I spoke about this at length, but the reason for the dragon’s strange sightings near Tabantha Village may be explained by the presence of this shrine. From the old books, our ancestors mentioned a temple of great importance located in roughly this area.” He pointed to the map on the Sheikah Slate placed on the table and pinched his fingers outwards to zoom into the far northwest region of Hyrule Kingdom. A large geographical depression represented on the map as darkening shades of brown stretched across the northwest corner, nearly severing the higher grounds of the Hebra Region from the rest of the kingdom. “Incidentally, during that time period, this valley was also called ‘The Valley of the Royal Family’ because the ancient kings made pilgrimages there.”</p><p> </p><p>     “I’ll go make tea.” Johnny mentioned and wheeled himself into the kitchen, gathered supplies and lifted himself to sit on the countertop. The kitchen had been nearby the living room, so through the opening of the walls connecting the two rooms, he continued listening to the conversation.</p><p> </p><p>     “Therefore,” William continued, “We want you to investigate Tanagar Canyon and seek out this forgotten temple, if it exists. Regrettably, Her Royal Highness has not awakened her stand ability, so we must move quickly.” Gyro left to retrieve the tray of tea that Johnny had prepared and soon after, they reconvened around the living room table. “I want to make this clear,” William spoke after a quick sip of tea. “You are not to venture far into this temple. It has been abandoned for countless millennia and may have made a fine home for monsters,” While he spoke, he set down his tea cup and added only an eighth of a teaspoon of cane sugar. “I will have you know that your father sees a talent inside of you, Gyro Zeppeli. You have a real knack for investigation, and it makes us confident that you will not fail. This will be a long journey, so replenish your supplies as needed before you depart.”</p><p> </p><p>     “You can’t expect us to leave so soon,” Johnny interrupted. The very notion of reloading his horse with supplies less than a day after unpacking them and collapsing on his bed was simply unfathomable. Mentally, he protested against the very idea of it, against the strings of fate inevitably pulling him towards whatever endgame the Goddess had set for him. Despite his reservations, however, he dragged himself to realize that it was useless to resist the advancement of fate. “Goddess, can’t we have just one day to ourselves? Before we return to hell?”</p><p> </p><p>     “That is unfortunate.” Solemnly, William leaned back into the chair and looked across the table at Johnny with a mixture of sympathy and sternness. He couldn’t place too much blame on him--he was young still and if he could help it, he would spare the both of them from witnessing the horrors the Calamity could bear. Notwithstanding his wishes, fate wouldn’t be as kind. “I know that this must be a great inconvenience for you, Johnny Joestar. You must be exhausted from your last journey, but I cannot stress this enough--Calamity DIO waits for no one. We must make the sacrifices now to preserve the future of Hyrule, and we all want the both of you to see that future.” Gyro thought he had heard Johnny mumble ‘<em>but why me?</em>’ underneath his breath, and when he glanced at his face, he noted the younger man staring down at the table with a faraway look. They sat mere feet apart, but he sensed Johnny retreating ever further within himself. “Your father thought highly enough of you to undertake this task,” William returned his attention to Gyro. “I expect your departure in a few days’ time. May the Goddess watch over the both of you.” Finished with his tea, William saw himself out. In the aftermath of his wake, Johnny remained in his wheelchair and rubbed his forehead with his thumb and index finger. His eyes couldn’t break out of the empty fixation on the table.</p><p> </p><p>     “If you don’t want to go, Johnny,” Gyro started and walked away with the tray of used tea cups. “Then simply don’t go. You can stay here and live within the protection of the village.”</p><p> </p><p>     “Gyro, I can’t let you do this by yourself.” He bitterly shook his head. “It’s far too dangerous out there for anyone to go alone. So…” He knew he would regret voicing his next thoughts, but if it was for his husband’s sake, he would eventually forgive himself. “I’m...I’m coming, I’m coming with you.”</p><p> </p><p>     “Johnny-”</p><p> </p><p>     “No, Gyro! I meant what I said, dammit.” He combined his fingers through his disheveled blonde hair, gripped a handful of strands and relaxed his fist. The rest of his frustration vented out through a lengthy exhale from his mouth. “I’m going with you on this adventure. I just wish we were given more notice.” Under his breath, he followed with, “I won’t leave you,” but he had directed it mostly towards himself and didn’t expect his husband to hear it. He had enough independence to accomplish most daily routines on his own, but that hardly eased the guilt that hung around his heart. As a self-perceived shell of the genius jockey adolescent he used to be, at times he considered himself to be nothing more than a weight attached to Gyro’s ankles. A burden to be dealt with and discarded accordingly if it meant to make the lives of others more convenient. In the face of his darkest thoughts, however, he pressed forward in helping Gyro serve his family, to prove useful in at least one category even if the light of his own future dimmed with the churning of time.</p><p> </p><p>     While Johnny intermittently sipped on his cooling tea, Gyro returned to his seat next to him, and in their mutual silence, he placed a hand on his. He occasionally squeezed Johnny’s hand and reminded him that his support remained there, next to him always. In the moment, Johnny believed that they would be alright. That they would see through this mission and their destiny side-by-side.</p><p> </p><p>    ~*~*~*</p><p> </p><p>With their travel preparations completed, they put Kakariko Village behind them once more, raced through the Sahasra Slope and turned northbound. Over two weeks of long days stretched with ceaseless traveling from sunrise to sunset, they crossed over the east-west span of Hyrule Field and trotted through the verdant expanse of Mabe Prairie. The gently sloping emerald hills and sparse patches of light forest delightfully evoked stories of Johnny’s hometown--Mabe Village just two hours away on horse--and the endless days he would spend at the nearby ranch. He spent every summer and spring eagerly visiting that ranch to watch his older brother Nicholas train and race laps on horseback; before his eyes, the ghost of his memory came to life featuring Nicolas perched atop the largest horse that he had ever seen and commanded it flawlessly. He supposed he derived much of his love of horses simply from observing his brother’s talent, but as they rode past Mabe Village proper, the joy of his early childhood memories soured into lingering tension. The atmosphere surrounding his former home gradually diminished into something unrecognizable after Nicholas’s untimely death. He had shared with Gyro his history in that village--the strain between himself and his father, and the emptiness that had ejected him into a life of gilded hollowness and abandonment. It had turned his life upside-down. Some years later, when Gyro arrived into his life in a whirlwind of serendipity, fortuitous change stumbled upon him. With the grace of liquid courage, they revealed their interest in one another, and their relationship culminated in marriage roughly a year later.</p><p> </p><p>     Fittingly, uneasy silence draped over them until the village faded into the cloudy distance. In all honesty, he felt whiplash at seeing the ranch still standing juxtaposed with his memory of his brother’s sudden death and a village that no longer offered him a sense of purpose nor security. Surely, his father carried out his daily routines in the face of his steadily declining wealth and renown as the bitter consequence of losing the sons who had carried the respect of his family name on their backs. Nonetheless, if he could avoid that place, Johnny thought, then it was all the better.</p><p> </p><p>    When they walked by the Sacred Grounds--a stone’s throw away from the southern gates of Castle Town--they paused their ambitious travel plans to say a prayer for the Goddess’s protection. Historically, the women of the Hylian Royal family visited the storied Sacred Grounds nestled in a small forest when they were on the cusp of coming of age. Following tradition, the princess had visited and prayed on her knees upon the smooth stone steps during her sixteenth birthday. On that day, she took a simple, small, ceremonious step to awakening the dormant powers the Goddess had bestowed upon her. These were similar powers that Johnny had possessed--abilities coined ‘stands’ by officials in the castle and among the authorities in the four corners of Hyrule. They dwelled as extensions of the Goddess within the souls of a select few people, but the conditions for activating these powers eluded most. Johnny hadn’t found this power within himself until one fateful day when he and Gyro were cornered by a band of rogues in the dusty Taobab Grasslands of the far southwest. Some of the other Joestar descendants realized these abilities since birth, while others unlocked them with very little to no provocation. In any case, only one stand accompanied each user and adopted a form derived from each user’s unique mental profile. Many of these users suspected these gifts of the Goddess resonated with the traces of malice seeping through the cracks of Hyrule. Thus, they appeared as omens of the danger closing in around them ready to defend the kingdom and banish the tides of evil.</p><p> </p><p>    While the sun approached its zenith, they traveled across the latter half of Hyrule Field, past Mount Gustaf and the Carok Bridge and through the craggy pathway of the Breach of Demise. The chasm spanned for a few miles into the heart of Hyrule Ridge and marked the natural entryway into the west side of Hyrule where the terrain traded smooth slopes, large green fields, and wet flat lands for mostly rugged rocks, steep valleys, and imposing mountains. Traffic that veered off of the major roads marked on the map would be difficult, if not impossible in some places for their horses, so they planned to stay as close to the main path as possible. With Tabantha Village as their first goal, they turned to the north and followed the road into the Salari Plain and the Serenne Stable. They would circle around the northern stretches of Tanagar Canyon into the Tabantha Tundra and follow the upper lip of the canyon until they arrived in Tabantha Village to rest and restock supplies. The flatter land along this route would also be more amenable to their horses and optimize their travelling distance before nightfall.</p><p> </p><p>Serenne Stable stood out to travelers with its signature ring of trees at its perimeter which could clearly be spotted from even as far as the Aldor Foothills and Elma Knolls, miles to the northeast and east, respectively. Merchants regarded it as a popular spot to market their wares because the Maritta Exchange bustled with commercial activity a few minutes away to the west. As a hub of trade, the Maritta Exchange offered travelers goods found across the Tabantha and Hebra frontiers as well as other items commonly reserved to East Hyrule. Many of these goods destined to the castle first passed through the exchange, earning it the moniker ‘<em>Hyrule’s Market Frontier.'</em>  The road ahead was only going to get much colder; a frosty world blanketed with near year-round coating of deep snow awaited them beyond the cliffs on the other side of the canyon. Consequently, they couldn’t afford to pass on cooking their next meals using spicy peppers and imported Goron spices. They were key ingredients that made every spicy dish a staple in the diets of mountaineers, after all. Traveling through the world of frost before them without those dishes was a fool’s bet at the very best. The traveling couple spent the night renting two beds in the stable--although they preferred to cuddle on one bed in the chilly night air, the beds themselves were much too narrow to accommodate more than one person comfortably. Within the next half a day, they departed and reached the far end of Rowan Plain to the north where an abandoned cabin waited for them in a forested strip of land lining the border of a neglected farm. Gyro set out to fetch some firewood from the foothills to the east, and Johnny agreed to stay behind within the cabin. In the meantime, he busied himself by preparing coffee in anticipation of Gyro’s return. It might not taste as excellent as his husband’s brand of coffee, but he thought he would appreciate his consideration nonetheless.</p><p> </p><p>    By chance, he looked out of the open window by the door and focused intently on the figure of the one person he had least expected--and wanted--to see: Diego Brando. Once a lowly village boy turned into a prestigious Royal Guard and personal guard of the Hylian King, Diego had long existed as a thorn in Johnny’s side since his childhood days within Mabe Village. At the time, Diego was nothing more than a ranch boy, a hired hand a few years older than Johnny to tame and care for Nicholas’s horses and who had also witnessed his death. He had lived in the village with his mother for a handful of years, but when she died from an illness, he jumped at any opportunity to earn money and make a name for himself; his hungry eyes eventually set upon mastering the art of equestrian racing and surpassing Nicholas’s legacy. Indeed, much like Nicholas, Diego proved to have an innate skill in caring for horses and employed an endless list of tricks to bring out their best potential. In fact, Johnny’s father insisted that only Nicholas could defeat such a rival and dismissed his younger son’s prowess outright. When a raid of bokoblins swept through the village when Johnny had just become a teenager, some soldiers deployed from the Outpost Town to the southeast reported that a lone boy, armed with a rusty sword and other farmer’s equipment, successfully drove the bokoblins from the ranch. They recognized his potential with a blade and smooth command atop a horse; his raw talent couldn’t be overlooked, so they promptly recruited him into the ranks of Hyrule’s guard. Although the fame and wealth of a star jockey’s life pleased him well, Diego’s ambitious sights turned towards an even higher, more prestigious position--the Royal Guards that directly serve the king and his kin. The ranch owners could do nothing to prevent their prized celebrity, gleaming with unmatched talent and genius, from leaving them behind. Hopelessly, they suffered a loss unlike any other and quietly drifted into obscurity. Following Nicholas’s death and Diego’s departure, work at the ranch slowed down, and after Johnny’s injury and subsequent fall from grace, it would surprise him if the ranch saw even a tenth of the work that poured in when he was a child.</p><p>   </p><p>    Johnny lived blissfully unaware of Diego’s fate. A particular dark part of him mused over Diego’s certain demise on some battlefield, but it became clear that wasn’t the case. Whispers spread around Mabe Village that one of their own had made it to the ranks of the Royal Guards, the most skilled of Hyrule’s knights that intimately served and protected the Royal Family and the highest ranking members of the King’s Court. So Diego had found more success in serving as a knight. Not that it really mattered; his absence from the world of horseracing wouldn’t be enough to reinstall confidence inside Johnny that he would return to his previous fame as a horse jockey. For now, the mere sight of his former rival educed bitterness within his heart troubled with the weight and distasteful memories of his past. </p><p> </p><p>    He could only see his back as Diego squatted down by the gentle upward slope of the foothills; occasionally, Diego lifted his head upwards, shaking his body somewhat then returned to looking at the ground and grabbing something with his hands. “What the hell is he doing?” Johnny wondered aloud and leaned forward across his lap, completely intrigued with the bizarre sight. Had serving in the Hylian army caused him to go mad? Just what was he grabbing from the ground? Bugs? Grassblades? As if on cue, Diego turned his head to the side just in time for Johnny to witness the very last thing he never expected: he licked up the small rocks and pebbles in his palm, lifted his head to the sky, and gulped them all down his throat. Disgusted but too fascinated to look away, Johnny cussed, “What the fuck…?” underneath his breath with a grimace crinkling his upper lip and freckled nose. Then he caught Diego’s eye. The knight flipped around to face him with wide eyes and a flattened line across his mouth. In some respects, he resembled a deer caught in the torchlight of a hunter.</p><p> </p><p>    As Johnny continued staring from the other side of the square-shaped window, Diego lifted his head up once more and took a few good whiffs of the air then jogged towards the cabin despite the dismissive waves from Johnny. At the window base, he leaned into the cabin, and his nose guided him in the direction of the coffee pot. “Coffee...I smell the aroma of coffee. What do you have there? Mr. Joestar, are you making coffee?” Without waiting for an answer, he invited himself in through the door beside the window and closed the distance to the coffee pot. “May I have a cup?”</p><p> </p><p>    “No. Make your own.” Johnny waved Diego away from the pot, but that did little to encourage him to leave the cabin entirely, despite his wishes. “And dammit, don’t you ever ask for permission before barging in--”</p><p> </p><p>    “But it’s just <em> one cup</em>,” He shamelessly cut through Johnny’s thought. “Please?” The small, pleading smile on his face irked Johnny; something unusual within that smile repulsed him. Perhaps it was the fact that Diego came armed with a Royal Shield and a Royal Guard’s sword, or it could have been the darkness within Diego’s eyes that hinted at a grander plan. Johnny glanced beyond the intruder before him and out of the window, hoping to see Gyro walk down the foothills just in time to throw this jester out. Of course, he didn’t appear.</p><p> </p><p>    “...Will you leave if I give it to you?” Exasperated, Johnny realized that he could do little else to send Diego out of the door. He mustered up whatever meager patience he could afford and started pouring a cup of coffee.</p><p> </p><p>    “Oh, yes.” Diego nodded enthusiastically and gratefully accepted the cup from Johnny, even if it was half-filled. He relished in the warmth radiating from the cup nestled in his palms and leaned in close to take another large whiff of the coffee’s aroma. With lungs filled with the warm and bitter scent, he exhaled slowly, releasing his breath steadily through partially opened lips while Johnny wished he was anywhere else but in front of him at the moment. “By the way,” His sudden voice dragged Johnny out of his wishes and left him dreading his next outlandish action. He desired to have Diego out of his sights; why was he still standing in front of him and sniffing around like some sort of dog? “Were you, by chance, wondering why I was eating rocks back there?”</p><p> </p><p>    “No, I wasn’t.” He replied immediately with a deadpan stare. Why wouldn’t he just leave? “You have your coffee. Now drink it then get out.” Ignoring his response, Diego continued unfettered after a sip of the bitter black coffee, </p><p> </p><p>    “They’re called gastroliths. They’re supposed to aid in digestion.”</p><p> </p><p>    “I literally didn’t ask--” The sharp crack of a branch breaking just outside of the cabin’s window caught Johnny’s attention, and Diego’s followed his eyes towards the unexpected danger. At the window, a black moblin snooped around the foliage outside, and its burly body filled the frame of the cabin’s opening. It rose to its full height, standing nine feet above the ground at its absolute tallest stretch, and with its thick trunk, it heartily sniffed the air and followed a tempting aroma towards the window. Johnny glanced towards the coffee pot and understood--the aroma of the hot coffee must have attracted this moblin as it had attracted Diego! The hulking beast slipped its magenta tongue back into its drooling maw and roared when it spotted the young men through the open window. At once, it pushed its body through the frame, but its broad shoulders and singular jagged horn atop its forehead impeded its progress. It even hit its head on the top frame of the window, staggered back and attempted to squeeze through again. Despite its size, it wasn’t very bright, Johnny mused, but when he realized that the window was directly next to the door--the only two possible exits from the cabin--he panicked and removed the coffee pot from the stove. He had his nail bullets to defend himself, and Diego came equipped with a sword and shield from the castle--those were guaranteed to be of top quality--but he planned to toss the scalding coffee at the moblin anyway to deter it from attacking. With any luck, the coffee would burn the moblin so badly that it would dash out of the area. Well, he understood it was a longshot, but he had no other choice. Slow Dancer was outside, and the moblin could easily target and devour their horses. Gyro was also somewhere in the wilderness, and if this moblin showed its ugly mug for coffee, Goddess knows what other beasts may be waiting for them just on the other side of the cabin’s wooden walls.</p><p> </p><p>    Diego instinctively backed up against the wall to the far side of the window while Johnny made some desperate calls for Gyro anyway, even if they were most likely drowned out by the moblin’s body and strained groans. The tight space of the cabin seemed to shrink further as the moblin forced itself forward and tumbled over the bottom frame of the window. It slammed on the underside of its snout with most of its weight, which stunned it for a few seconds, enough for Diego to brandish his sword and shield and Johnny to fire nail bullets. Unfortunately, the moblin had carried a dragonbone moblin club--a wooden club fortified with an ancient bone, some claimed to belong to an extinct species of dragon, that proved to be durable enough to smash through bodies. With one powerful swing of its club, it absorbed Johnny’s bullets and slammed against Diego’s shield, throwing his arm awkwardly aside and leaving him open to a follow-up attack. It groaned hungrily, climbed to its feet and closed in on Diego with red beady eyes trained on its next kill.</p><p> </p><p>    Upon the foothills, Gyro had turned his face in the direction of the cabin and peered through the sparse collection of trees at the faint sound of snorting and roars through the east-bound wind. Slow Dancer and Valkyrie fled to the south in the advent of the boorish intruder, and Gyro dashed off towards the monster with a steel ball in his hand.</p><p> </p><p>    Diego parried one heavy blow from the moblin, but he was unprepared for the sudden charge of the moblin’s foot; it pinned him down by the torso and pressed enough to squeeze much of the air from his lungs. The moblin raised its club again, high over its head, but a flurry of nail bullets shredded the flesh of its arms. Naturally, when the club dropped to the floor with a thud, the moblin lost its balance; they were notoriously clumsy creatures when thrown off-guard, after all, and this one stumbled backwards towards the window. Freed upon the crushing weight of the monster’s smelly foot pad, Diego rolled to his right side, picked himself up and resumed facing down the creature. Suddenly, the wall of the cabin next to the window and its opposing wall shattered into splinters; a small, green object blasted through the cabin and created holes large enough to fit an average sized person. The moblin, startled by the commotion, stood up in the center of the window frame, unaware of a second steel ball whirling towards its head. The ball collided with the back of its skull, felling the beast among the splinters and debris, and in the brief moment of unsettling calm, Johnny followed the ball when it returned to the hand of its owner. Gyro stepped into the cabin through the busted wall and noted with satisfaction the moblin unconscious on the floor. “I just can’t leave you alone for one fucking second, Johnny Joestar.” If there wasn’t a large lump of moblin stirring in the room, Johnny might have given him a relieved smile, but the moblin had already attempted to reach for its club, reminding them of the precious time they had to escape.</p><p> </p><p>    “Gyro! Our horses…?”</p><p> </p><p>    “Took off towards Serenne Stable, and we’ll do the same.” Gyro strode across the broken bits of wood, hoisted Johnny over his shoulder and exited through the hole in the wall while the monster became more reanimated. It pushed itself onto its knees more quickly than they had expected and sniffed out its fleeting prey. When they reached past the trees, Gyro summoned his horse with a shrill whistle; seconds later, both Valkyrie and Slow Dancer returned to a spot meters in front of the forest. “We’ll need to outrun it while it’s still confused.” He placed Johnny on the ground in front of Slow Dancer and mounted his own horse. Despite feeling a dark sense of satisfaction at the possibility of Diego’s demise, Johnny still looked back towards the cabin for signs of the knight. In the energy of escape, he had lost sight of Diego, but considering his reputation of entering the Royal Guard faction of Hyrule’s most skilled soldiers, surely he must have recognized that it was impossible to fight effectively in close quarters. Not that it would make a difference. He wanted Diego gone anyway.</p><p> </p><p>    “And Tabantha Village? We were on the quickest path!”</p><p> </p><p>    “Forget it! We’ll just go around to the canyon. It won’t make a difference as long as we reach the canyon and find this temple.”</p><p> </p><p>    Aboard their horses, they raced down the well-beaten road towards a ring of trees in the distance and occasionally glimpsed behind themselves for that moblin. Instead of the moblin, however, Johnny caught perhaps the second worst thing to follow them--Diego Brando upon his horse Silver Bullet. He rapidly approached from the distant cluster of trees, but more importantly, no moblin chased after him. “What the hell is this asshole doing?” Gyro growled when he also recognized Diego closing the distance. “He could lead the moblin right towards us!”</p><p> </p><p>    “Ignore him,”Johnny looked ahead. “He’s that ranch boy I’ve been telling you about from Mabe Village. Well, he may be a Royal Guard now directly serving the king, but he’s still no good. He might be following us on his return trip to the castle.”</p><p> </p><p>    “Why is a castle boy here of all places, and a royal guard at that?” He looked back again and realized that Diego had closed nearly half the original distance between them. “Damn, look how close he’s gotten! He must be late for tea and biscuits in the castle.” Johnny shook his head in amusement. When Diego followed them by a few meters, they accelerated and inserted more space between them. He proved their efforts moot, nonetheless, and closed in on them with little more effort. He called out for their attention, but neither of them responded; they assumed that he only wanted to brag, and they refused to hear any of it.</p><p> </p><p>    “Hey, hey, guys, wait up! It’s not like that!” He stared at the backs of Johnny and Gyro as they rode towards the stable. “Come on, guys! I just want to have a little talk!” They answered him with more silence, but he refused to be deterred, as always. “I thought the way you dispatched that cretin was impressive! I haven’t seen a technique like that. Could you show it to me? Just one more time? Please?”</p><p> </p><p>   “Ignore him, Gyro. He has to return to the castle sometime.” Johnny whispered over to his husband and carefully avoided giving Diego another glance in his direction. They had assumed that their unlikely companion couldn’t hear them from their significant distance.</p><p> </p><p>    “If he doesn’t shut up, I’m gonna knock him off his horse.” Gyro grumbled.</p><p> </p><p>    “There’s no need to act like ruffians,” Diego suddenly added, and his voice sounded much closer than before. Both Johnny and Gyro had given in and looked behind themselves to regretfully watch him not only reach their position but also match their pace. “I wanted to give my thanks for helping me back there. Those moblins are bloody brutes; that’s the truth of it. It had me pinned down with its foul foot until you came along. What a horrid stench wafted from that thing!” He waved his hand in front of his nose for emphasis and pretended he didn’t notice the cold glares from two sets of eyes beaming onto him. “If I could breathe when it jammed its vile foot onto me, I think it would’ve burnt my nostrils!”</p><p> </p><p>    “Dude,” Gyro whispered to Johnny with his eyes lingering on the still yapping Diego next to him, “he could hear us.”</p><p> </p><p>    They endured the longest few minutes of their lives of hearing Diego ramble incessantly about the circumstances surrounding that moblin until they returned to the stable. Fortunately, he had also mentioned that he needed to return to the castle, and while that pleased Johnny and Gyro that he would finally be out of their ears, it also meant that they would have to put up with him for another mile or so until they parted ways for good at the Breach of Demise. They stopped briefly at the stable to allow their horses some rest with the intention of returning to the road within the day, but none of them expected to hear a woman’s harrowing scream pierce the ambient silence of nature. It started softly, carried over by the winds to the southwest, and as her screams continued to climb in volume, she drew the attention of every stable worker and traveler in the settlement. Alta, a young lady sixteen years in age, with cropped earthy brown hair, matching eyes, and wearing a simple pleated shirt and sleeveless plaid dress, dashed through the grass and dirt. Her eyes streamed tears that clouded her vision and bits of dried mud and dirt speckled her cheeks. “Help me! Goddess, please, someone help me!” She rushed the front desk, taking the stable owner by surprise. “Please, please, please,” Reflexively, the stable owner retracted himself from the front desk in the face of Alta’s hysteria when she reached for him. “You have to help me! It’s my friend--she--oh Goddess, she’s going to die!”</p><p> </p><p>    “Ma’am, ma’am,” As a humble man with a love of horses and the wilderness, he admitted to be ill-prepared to handle such a crisis. With his hands held up in front of him defensively, he kept some distance away from the woman. “What happened? How may I assist you?”</p><p> </p><p>    “It’s my friend--those monsters, they dragged her off! They tried to grab me too; they’re going to eat her!” Impatient and vibrating with despair, she slipped away from the front desk and into the stable’s inn, pleading with guests and ignoring the stable owner’s calls to stay outside. “Please, someone help!” She looked at every guest in turn, even approaching the ones sitting on their beds. To each one, she mumbled some incoherent cries for help before moving to the next. “I’ll even pay you--anything you want, just name it! Anything, just help her, dammit!” Although the woman had made a spectacle of herself in the eyes of Gyro and Johnny, Diego perked up at the mere mention of payment. What a shame for a girl of seemingly lower stature than the women of his hometown to find herself in a desperate situation, but all the better for him. After all, even rescue services come with a price.</p><p> </p><p>    “You’ll pay?” He inquired, perched upon a seat next to a table, and absorbed the woman’s attention. “How much is your friend’s life even worth? If it’s too shallow a price, I can’t justify risking my own life to save some common girl.” Right away, Alta removed her earrings of gold and small gold chain necklace--heirlooms of her mother--and presented them to Diego.</p><p> </p><p>    “I don’t have much to offer, but here! I’ll pay you with this gold, and if that’s not enough,” She pulled a small satchel from her belt and tossed it onto the table. “Take my savings too. You have to understand, we grew up together and loved exploring the outdoors. So, we went to explore Salari Plains when we were attacked by a camp of moblins. I found a shock arrow just laying around on the grass and got away, but my friend--they dragged her back to their camp. Please, mister, I’m begging you to help her!” Diego paid little attention to her story as he counted the contents of that satchel and inspected the quality of the gold. Although the design was simplistic, the gold of the jewelry appeared to be genuine and made of decent quality, and the satchel contained nearly 500 rupees. A rather large sum for a common girl living among the craggy rocks of western Hyrule, but he supposed that he could make better use of it.</p><p> </p><p>    “You should have known better,” Johnny countered, and the girl recoiled underneath his critical and pitiful gaze. “What did you think was going to happen? You and your friend went outside without even a means to defend yourself. No wonder you idiots found yourself in this position,” Her bitter tears poured out of her eyes, unrelenting as she wiped them away with her hands. She knew that he was right, and she deserved his harsh words. The shame of it all swallowed her whole.</p><p> </p><p>    “Don’t think that we’re going to help you just because you look young.” Gyro added, and the girl dropped to her knees; the walls closed in on her, and her pleas could be useless. The moblins who dragged her friend off may have boiled her to death, chopped her body into pieces, and devoured her. She threw herself at their feet anyway and begged for them to seek the kindness in their own hearts and change their minds.</p><p> </p><p>    “Please, please, please,” She recognized that she had been in the wrong, but if the Goddess could grant her friend a second chance and see them through with grace, she vowed to rethink her actions and stay within the protection of the settlements. “I’m begging you; save my friend!” Desperate to be heard, she grabbed onto Gyro’s boot, but he swiftly pulled out of her hands. “I swear, I’ll be more careful from now on. If only we could have another chance. Please find it in your hearts to help her. Take my money and my jewelry as payment.”</p><p> </p><p>    “There's quite a bit of money in here,” Diego chimed in and sorted out the colored rupees within his palm. Mostly they were small gems of red and blue, but the few that glistened purple caught his eyes the most. “Nearly 500 rupees, and the jewelry is acceptable quality.” He slid his spoils into the satchel and pocketed everything. “Pretty decent for a common girl. I think I can make an exception for you.” He stood up, and with his sheathed blade strapped to his back, he walked past Alta on the floor.</p><p> </p><p>    “I know I’ve been a fool,” She moaned, body rocking with anxiety and words choppily slipping out of her mouth. “I’ve been the biggest fool for wandering into a monster’s territory, but I don’t know what else to do.” Her voice petered out into a sobbing whisper. “I put both of our lives at risk for nothing but a child’s game. I don’t deserve your help nor the Goddess’s mercy; I’m old enough to know better. You’re right...I deserve to lose everything, but please don’t let my friend die. She shouldn’t have to pay for my careless mistake.” The young men exchanged glances, and when they turned their eyes downward to look upon the miserable woman at their feet, their gazes appeared considerably less harsh. In the tense silence, Johnny spoke up first,</p><p> </p><p>    “Alright, alright, we’ll help you, but don’t expect this ever again.” She lifted herself to sit on her legs. “You’ve gotten lucky this time.”</p><p> </p><p>    “Oh thank you, thank you so much!” </p><p> </p><p>They promptly mounted their horses and advanced to Salari Plain to the southwest. The site she had described waited just beyond the Marietta Exchange into a corner patch of field at the intersection of the steep cliffs of Upland Lindor and the southern lip of Tanagar Canyon. The place was a little more than a few minutes away, so the roundtrip would be quick work. Additionally, in the best case scenario, they could knock the monsters into the canyon and let gravity finish them.</p><p> </p><p>    “What a damned fool,” Gyro commented. “Women like that are annoying. Why did you even agree to help her? Her friend could be a lost cause by now.”</p><p> </p><p>    “I know but,” Johnny answered him pensively, “she should face the consequences of her mistake, but it didn’t seem right to ignore her. At least when we can help it.”</p><p> </p><p>    “I thought you wanted to steer clear of monsters, and now you’re willing to charge towards them?”</p><p> </p><p>    “Eventually...I’ll have to fight them. I know I can’t just keep running from everything.” He paused in Gyro’s silence then looked over to him. “My destiny is going to catch up to me sooner or later, so I need to be willing to confront it. And you know who taught me that?” He caught Gyro’s glance towards him. “You did. You wanted me to try and make a difference, and so I’ll try.”</p><p> </p><p>    “Johnny, I swear,” In the distance, four moblins--one silver and three blue--crowded around a campfire. Through a pair of binoculars and the Sheikah Slate, the young men spied on the moblins sitting restlessly; the brutes grumbled and brandished pointed sticks, and in the corner, pressed up against the wall, a young woman with her arms and legs bound together by rope pressed herself against the rocky wall. She must be that woman’s friend, but a hand waved in front of their line of vision, forcing their attention elsewhere. They glared at the culprit--Diego Brando--perched upon his horse in front of them.</p><p> </p><p>    “I see that you also took the young lady’s request. I’m sure the act of goodwill is enough to satisfy you.” He patted the fattened satchel on his belt and the glares shot at him seemed to roll over his skin. “In the end, that is it’s own reward. Now then, how do we proceed in routing these monsters? Shall we give them the one, two, three?”</p><p> </p><p>    “Figure that out on your own, asshole.” Gyro spat. Johnny overlooked Diego’s comments and resumed scanning ahead. Three red explosive barrels also stood by the camp, a safe distance away from the campfire, but he supposed that it was close enough to blow those monsters into the air. However, the girl was far too close to the barrels. Next, he looked up to a wooden watch tower jutting out beyond the tops of the cliffs. He initially suspected that a bokoblin hid itself up on the platform high above the ground in wait for the chance to rain down arrows upon intruders, but he realized that it could have easily spotted them approaching from that height. He could also divert the attention of the moblins as a decoy and lead them around the camp just long enough for the others to carry away the girl then he would make good use of those barrels. The plains, in essence, were open land, free of obstacles and ideal for stretching Slow Dancer’s legs.</p><p> </p><p>    “I’ll rush them.” When he spoke, he attracted the attention of the other men. “I can force those monsters to follow me, and as I circle around, you two can grab the girl. Then, I’ll blow them into the canyon.”</p><p> </p><p>    “But he with the fastest horse would be better suited for this endeavor.” Diego challenged. “In that case, I volunteer as the decoy. It’s child’s play, really. Even scary lynels have trouble in keeping up with my Silver Bullet.”</p><p> </p><p>    “Even better.” Gyro agreed and gestured to Diego. He gave Johnny a knowing look. “Let the monsters follow him. They might just get rid of him too, so it’ll be a win-win situation for us.”</p><p> </p><p>    “You’re right.” Johnny nodded.</p><p> </p><p>    “How awful.” Diego huffed and guided his horse to walk in front of his temporary companions. “You should be grateful that I’m helping you. There won’t be a next time.” Silver Bullet erupted into a gallop directly towards the encampment while the other two walked a good distance behind and waited for the cue. The plan proceeded just as Johnny had suggested--the moblins caught sight of Diego rushing towards them, set their pointed spears alight and gave chase. The captive girl, still bound and vulnerable on the rocks, watched with a skip in her heart when her kidnappers disappeared beyond a craggy wall. Her eyes darted in the direction of the sound of more hooves approaching her, and Johnny and Gyro entered her field of vision about a minute later.</p><p> </p><p>    “Johnny, her legs and arms are bound by rope. Cut them with your fingernails.” The girl kept her eyes on Johnny while he dismounted Slow Dancer and pulled himself closer to her. He observed fresh tears seeping through the corners of her eyes, just as he expected.</p><p> </p><p>    “Calm down, hey,” He softly spoke. “We’re going to take you back to Serenne stable. Your friend sent us here. What’s your name?”</p><p> </p><p>    “It’s Margaret,” She whispered, but her voice barely passed through her lips; he strained to hear her answer.</p><p> </p><p>    “Just...hold still, Margaret. Don’t move your legs or arms until I say so.” His spinning fingernails sliced through the rope easily, and as the ropes fell around her limbs, she scrambled to her feet and dried her eyes on the sleeves of her tunic.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>    “Thank you,” A shy smile formed on her quivering lips when she looked down at Johnny.</p><p> </p><p>    “The castle boy’s on his way back here,” Gyro, who had been watching Diego lead the pursuing moblins around the plains, moved to mount his horse, but he didn’t realize Margaret approaching him until she nearly committed the sin of touching his horse’s reins. Swiftly, he swatted her hands away and looked down at her. “Hey, what do you think you’re doing?”</p><p> </p><p>    “Oh, I,” Frightened, she backed off underneath Gyro’s hard stare. “It’s just that, if we’re in a rush, I’d need to escape on a horse.”</p><p> </p><p>    “I would never let a woman on my horse, so that’s why,” he approached her and although she backed up another step away from him, he hoisted her dainty frame atop Slow Dancer, right in front of Johnny, “you’ll be riding on Johnny’s horse.” He mounted Valkyrie and sped off just as Diego made the wide turn towards the camp. “Hurry up, Johnny. Diego and those monsters are about to return.” As Slow Dancer trotted along, Johnny placed a hand firmly on Margaret’s back and steadied her. When he reached a spot far enough away from the camp to avoid the monsters but close enough for the barrels to be within range of his nail bullets, he let her slide off of his horse and take her place on the saddle properly in front of him.</p><p> </p><p>    “Hey,” Johnny spoke to her calmly. “You may want to close your eyes for this next part. We’re going to clear the monsters then return you to your friend.”</p><p> </p><p>    “But how--”</p><p> </p><p>    “Just close your eyes. And your ears too.” She obeyed and ducked her head down while Johnny readied his spinning nails and aimed for the red barrels. As gracefully as a steady breeze, Diego dashed into the grounds of the camp and led the moblins within feet of those barrels. Without missing a second, Johnny fired a few nail bullets and sent the monsters flying over the crags and into the deep rift of the canyon.</p><p> </p><p>~*~*~*</p><p> </p><p>Margaret dismounted Slow Dancer and, without delay, ran into the arms of Alta pacing around the fields surrounding the stable. “Good grief,” Gyro muttered for Johnny’s ears only. “Are you intending to help every idiot with poor judgement? I’ll remind you that we still haven’t completed our mission.”</p><p> </p><p>    “Just this once.” Johnny looked on at the pair of young women rejoicing in each other’s company. “I don’t want to make this a habit yet, but just for now, it felt nice to do the right thing. Besides, think of it as training for, well...you know.” The women had given their last thanks to them and turned towards the stable inns. Promptly, Gyro guided Valkyrie towards the beaten path and proceeded south towards the Breach of Demise.</p><p> </p><p>    “Then let’s move on. The entrance to the canyon is still far away, and to make up time, we’ll need to travel a little while past sundown.”</p><p> </p><p>~*~*~*</p><p> </p><p>They followed the main road as it proceeded south, through the twisting arid chasm of the Breach of Demise, and had retained an unexpected and un-welcomed traveling partner--Diego Brando. After destroying the moblin camp, Diego insisted on accompanying them on his mission to find the forgotten temple within the canyon. He claimed he had received a royal order from King Rhoam himself, but he never presented the official document signed and sealed by the king. So fate would intermingle their paths for a little while longer. How fortunate for Johnny and Gyro to test their patience in his company; they even estimated that his mere presence would lengthen the last leg of their journey. How fortunate, indeed.</p><p> </p><p>    When the sunlight retreated beyond the mountain and blankets of darkness draped into the valleys and small plains, they continued onward while the Tabantha stable and the Tabantha Great Bridge emerged on the horizon. But they hadn’t expected to catch a glimpse of a bright ruby streak of light snaking down from the heavens. Without warning, the wind roared all around them, startling their horses who were alerted to the presence of a much larger creature descending into their vicinity. Waves of oppressive heat followed the rush of wind from the skies overhead, and as they squinted towards the clouds, they beheld the flaming body of Dinraal sailing through the night air. She glided with grace upon the winds into the rift of the canyon  accompanied by an entourage of fireballs flames wafting from her brightly burning body. If he hadn’t caught himself comparing the image of Dinraal to the sight of Farosh erupting from the waters of Lake Hylia, Gyro might have forgotten about the Sheikah Slate hooked to his belt. He captured much of the dragon’s girth in a photograph, but it simply could not scratch the itch of his curiosity. He raced the dragon along the southern lip of the canyon and pursued by Diego, who was eager to observe as much of the ethereal beast as possible, and Johnny brought up the rear with an instinctual fear of the captivating awe of the drake. Undaunted, the horses swept along the rocky terrain, guided by the ruby red light of the fireballs that dissolved into embers on the rocks around them. Streams of sweat poured down their faces, making their clothes and hair stick to them, but still they maintained their pace even as the air temperature continued to climb. They were simply captured by the girth and tangible power emanating from the dragon; Gyro looked over his left shoulder and drank in every detail, every shimmering scale and dangling claw, and gazed into the orange-red contours of its blazing eyes. The increasingly rocky and elevated terrain of Mount Rhoam’s western face ended their pursuit, however, and Dinraal pulled away, leaving behind a trio of starstruck young men watching as it ascended far beyond the mountains and the clouds.</p><p> </p><p>    “Extraordinary!” Diego exclaimed. “Dragons <em> do </em> exist! Well, it’s a shame it couldn’t stay around for long. What a fantastic discovery,” He guided Silver Bullet to return to Tabantha Stable while ceaselessly commenting on the dragon’s body snaking across the sky. It would be quite the tale to recount to the king along with the discovery of the forgotten temple. Perhaps it was just what he needed to climb the next step in society, and he wasn’t going to hand this golden opportunity over to his companions. But to Johnny and Gyro, who watched the heavens expectantly even after the last of the dragon disappeared, his voice faded out in the background ambience of nature at nightfall. </p><p> </p><p>    “It was traveling along the length of the canyon.” Gyro examined the photo he had taken of the creature. Her s-shaped horns glowed in crimson light and waves of fire stretched from them, fanning across her lower jaw and spreading like fingers into the space below. Much like his picture of Farosh, he memorialized only the head of the dragon, but it would prove to be enough to assist their cause. He clipped the Sheikah Slate to his belt and followed Diego’s path with Johnny trailing him. “The forgotten temple may be down there after all.” As the temperatures cooled in the early evening, Johnny breathed a little easier, free of the grip of stifling heat.</p><p> </p><p>    “That was intense. If I had been just a bit closer, I could’ve passed out from the sweltering heat. Why didn’t it attack us? Even the last dragon hardly noticed us when you brazenly went after it.”</p><p> </p><p>    “Who knows? My old man claims that they’re servants for the Goddess. Could be spirits of the Golden Goddesses who created the world.”</p><p> </p><p>    “And you would just...attack one?”</p><p> </p><p>    “We’ve been over this already, Johnny. My father may disagree, but these dragons were created to serve the Royal Family in times of great need. That’s their purpose for appearing in front of Hylians. So clipping off a tiny scale in the name of peace can be justified.”</p><p> </p><p>    “Don’t overdo it. We wouldn’t want to push the envelope with forces beyond our control or understanding.”</p><p> </p><p>    “Now you sound like my old man, <em>nyo ho</em>! Keep up, we’re rounding the corner to the canyon.”</p><p> </p><p>~*~*~*</p><p> </p><p>The wall of sunlight crept into the canyon and stretched about halfway down the northernmost face of rock. The Forgotten Temple stood embedded into the canyon cliff as a testament to a world that existed since time immemorial. Of course, no one in all of Hyrule nor beyond could recall neither its purpose nor origin. Cracked, shattered and standing stalwart among the dust floating on the canyon floor, it waited patiently for its trio of visitors, and welcomed them with debris from three pairs of shattered colossal stone pillars, partially consumed by the earth, skewed across the ground among the tufts of dry grass and brush. The silence in the aftermath of aging lingered beyond the massive half-circle window covered in emerald moss and perched meters above the ground. The canyon dirt and gravel buried the remnants of the collapsed grand archway that served as the proper entrance centuries ago, leaving them with no other choice than to climb the face of the temple. Gyro and Diego dismounted their horses and gawked at the only entrance set approximately thirty meters above them. Johnny waited on the ground below and kept watch over the road ahead while Gyro and Diego attempted their ascent on a stone pillar leaning against the front of the temple. From there, they climbed further to a shelf a few meters below the archway then soon after lifted themselves into the entrance. Gyro completed the climb first and simply trudged onward even when Diego, still pushing himself up from the carved stone below, stretched out a hand towards him.</p><p> </p><p>    Walking past the debris of moss-covered stone, they peered into the dusty silence of the temple’s greatest chamber stretching back into undisturbed shadows. Something remained waiting just beyond the curtain of dust and the nest of decayed Guardians unearthed and perched on ledges anchored to the walls and the floor below. Uneasily, they crept forward towards the darkness and farther into the stone chamber abandoned by Hyrule and by time. Since they had made it this far and found the aged building, they might as well explore its neglected chambers. It may just yield the very power the princess had been seeking for all this time. They had to admit that they found a good place to start.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. The Siege of Fort Hateno</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>On Hyrule's darkest day, Princess Zelda, desperate to awaken her dormant sealing powers, stands her ground against Calamity DIO's encroaching forces. Her troops, however, buckle underneath DIO's pressure, and morale is fading fast. With Hyrule Castle lost, Joestar blood spilt, and the remaining Hyrulean forces corralled ever farther to the northeast reaches of the periled kingdom, the future of her people grew bleak. In the eleventh hour, the surviving Hyrulean forces hold the line at Fort Hateno and pray for a miracle to happen.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>It's here! Chapter three! This chapter is rated M (and will therefore increase the overall rating of this fiction to M) primarily for graphic descriptions of gore and violence and, in my opinion, marks a stark turning point in the tone of this story. While chapters 1 and 2 were rather lighthearted and featured the thrill of adventure with your best friend, this chapter features the vicious battle at Fort Hateno at the advent of the Calamity 100 years prior to the start of the events of Breath of the Wild. If you played Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, you'll notice that I took a lot of cues from "The Siege of Fort Hateno" challenge. That was...a very intense battle, to say the very least.</p>
<p>WARNING: This chapter features graphic descriptions of gore and violence as well as mentions of death and references to a major character death.</p>
<p>Oh, and Happy Early Valentine's Day to everyone.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In the midst of the darkness and endless torrents of rain, Guardian Stalkers crawled over the charred bits and burning ruins across the landscape of Hyrule. Their mechanical arms ripped away clumps of mud and soaked soil from the earth. With swirling eyes scanning the surroundings embedded in cylindrical heads that rotated in a perfect circle, no living intelligent creature escaped their assault. Among the guardian menaces, large throngs of moblins, bokoblins, and lizalfoes swarmed Ash Swamp and Blatchery Plain and funneled in from the eastside of the Dueling Peaks. Lynels, too, with a fond taste of Hylian blood marched within their ranks, brandishing their Savage Lynel Crushers and other massive metal weapons in anticipation of finally satisfying their insatiable hunger for battle. Among the scores of beasts, stalmonsters climbed out of the mud and trampled over burning brick and snapped trees, sneering and snarling with hatred. From these evil bodies approaching the Hyrule’s dwindling forces, embers of malice dispatched from their bodies on the currents of wind and choked the air. With the army of unified monsters closing in on Fort Hateno and bringing with them a storm of malice, a significant number of Hyrule's surviving soldiers stood at the gates of the fort, weapons drawn and eyes focused on the wall of enemies. Princess Zelda stood at the fort’s top, overseeing the impending arrival of what could be Hyrule’s doom. She clutched the Sheikah Slate in one hand and looked down to the Silent Princess flower in the other. If they failed to hold Calamity DIO’s forces here, all of Hyrule could be lost. Fort Hateno had stood for ages between narrow rocky cliffs, and although it had seen many battles, it was little more than a deliberate pile of stones. If it collapsed, nothing else could prevent these forces of malice from sweeping through the rest of the Necluda Region and swallowing any settlements that stood in their way. She assumed the last stronghold that could repel DIO’s army for a time was the Akkala Citadel Tower, but her heart feared that the long-lived bastion of Hyrule had been surrounded shortly after the fall of Hyrule Castle. Hyrule’s future faded fast. Some descendants of the Joestar lineage who were destined to slay Calamity DIO have given the ultimate sacrifice so that their princess could remain alive just a little while longer. Haunted by their sacrifices and backed against a wall with no stand powers of her own to lend to the fight, she prayed to the Goddess for safe harbor through, as history would recall, Hyrule’s Deadliest Battle.</p>
<p>    “Your Royal Highness,” a handful of soldiers who bustled around the top of the fort behind strings of archers addressed her. Among them, their captain descended to one knee before the princess with his eyes focused to the ground. “A unit of elemental Guardians has been spotted crossing Mable Ridge in this direction. Furthermore, my scouts have reported that hinoxes and talus reinforcements are on their way from the west. It’s far too dangerous to be outside. We advise you to retreat beyond the fort. We will give everything that we have to stave off these beasts and buy you enough time.”</p>
<p>    “No.” She answered in a soft but resolute voice. With her eyes trained down towards the petals of the Silent Princess, she slowly met the soldier’s gaze and battled with the instinctual desire to run. Yet, without her stand and the final piece to defeat Calamity DIO, what benefit could running away do for her? She could fight with an enhanced Sheikah Slate, but without the sealing power of the Goddess, her enemies would multiply every time she struck one down. It was useless to keep living the charade and pretending that if she just kept running, the Goddess might grant her wish out of pity. “I will stay here and lend my strength to the battle. Even without the Goddess’s power, I can help reduce the enemy’s numbers and save lives. I can’t keep running forever,” she turned from the soldier to face the battlefield awaiting the carnage. “I’m choosing to make my stand here at Fort Hateno. If we lose here, Hyrule will be lost. Do I make myself clear?”</p>
<p>    “..Yes, Your Royal Highness.”</p>
<p>    “My father...I do not know what has become of him, but I fear it is for the worst. The last I saw him, he remained within the castle and fought the invading guardians with all the strength he could. He believed that I would succeed in fulfilling my role and never once failed to push me to realize that goal. But my consistent failures have jeopardized his life and the state of my kingdom. Therefore, I will run no longer. Now go. Prepare for battle.”</p>
<p>    “As you wish, Your Royal Highness.” The captain and his immediate subordinates departed among the ranks of archers training their arrows on the farthest perimeter of their range.</p>
<p>    Upon the wet ground, Jocelyn Jones stood shoulder-to-shoulder among the vanguard. Standing at five foot ten inches, above average height as most of the Joestar lineage have proven, they were not a soldier in Zelda’s army. Instead, they were simply a youth of Joestar descent destined to fight on the losing side of a war. The Joestar birthmark hidden underneath layers of armor on their left shoulder testified to their lineage, and while the three small freckles underneath the corner of their left eye were considered lucky by some, they felt anything but lucky in that moment. The rain dampened their long strands of golden blonde hair styled in a flat faux mohawk, and fat droplets slid down the shortened strands of the tapered sides of their head and the pointed tip of their nose. Some of these droplets caught on their eyelashes and flung into their dark blue eyes or splashed onto their cheek. Fists, not made for fighting, clenched the grip of their sword until the knuckles turned white, and with a heavy swallow, they stared ahead towards their impending fate.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Elsewhere, Jolyne and Jotaro waited among the rows of soldiers buzzing with anticipation upon the arrival of the waves of enemies. Caesar Zeppeli, too, anxiously searched for a clear opening to mount an attack and take a few of the bigger monsters by surprise. Among the soldiers trotting on horseback, eyeing up the enemy ranks, his distant cousin Gyro Zeppeli, who had regrouped with Zelda’s forces a day ago after a somber return to Kakariko Village, patrolled the front lines while identifying potential exploits in the enemy’s lineup. The tight formation of the mob crossed the landmarks signaling the farthest reaches of the archers, exciting them into releasing volley upon volley of arrows. “Fire!” Their captain ordered, and they executed with dark joy. Pelted by raindrops and arrowheads, many of the smaller front line monsters fell over, dead in the mud with several arrow shafts spearing into their bodies. Some of the more cunning, armed with metal shields, blocked the storm of arrows and charged forward, followed by the massive momentum of their enormous comrades. With a mighty roar, the footsoldiers erupted into a full run and feverishly clashed with the monsters all across the plains. The shower of arrows continued on the most distant of DIO’s forces coming in from the Dueling Peaks, but it had little effect on the most giant and bulky. Hinoxes, some infected with blankets of slimy malice swamp stuck to their piggish faces and sagging chest and arms, stomped past the arrows, sponging them, and crushed Hylian soldiers unfortunate enough to fight in their path. Clumsy large things as they were, they smashed their fists and bodies into the ground, swiped soldiers by the handfuls and crunched on their heads. “Aim for the eye!” Archers shouted, some of them as a knee-jerk reaction to the horror of witnessing the soldier next to them be either crushed or eaten. Swiftly, a stream of arrows descended upon the Hinox’s head, and many arrowheads buried themselves into its bulging eye, knocking it into the ground for good.</p>
<p>     Death awaited the Hylians at every turn. Lynels galloped through their ranks, gleefully swinging their swords and crushers and slicing through large groups of soldiers in a single stroke. Several layers of blades adorned the lynels’ weapons which made short work of Hylian armor, crushing and smashing through the metal plates and shattering the organs and bones within. Streaks of blood and shredded flesh stuck upon the myriad of hooks on their shields and crushers and flung off with powerful swings. Flying limbs and bodies heralded the arrival of a lynel in Jocelyn’s vicinity, alerting them to reach for the thunderstorm rod hanging from their back and stop the beast in its tracks with one pillar of lightning. ‘<em> A white-maned one </em>,’ they noted and dashed forward with adrenaline. These beasts in particular were no trifling matter. Elemental weapons hardly affected them, so even the thunderstorm rod could only buy their allies a few precious seconds. Nonetheless, available options fleeted fast along with any shred of hope for victory. With a wave of the rod, a wicked bolt of lightning crashed down on the lynel, rendering it immobile, and Hylian forces soon bore down on its body. As they had feared, it broke through its paralysis and shirked off soldiers from its flank. Its eyes snapped to single out Jocelyn from the ground, and bolstered by a mighty roar that shook the air around it, it sheathed its weapon and charged towards them at full force. They slipped by at the very last second with their stand Minutes to Midnight materialized behind them. An elegant lady resembling a mermaid bride dressed in fins colored midnight blue, the stand swayed across Jocelyn’s side, bared its rows of dagger-like teeth and lunged forward, scraping at the lynel’s flank. Its broad and flat flaws and rows of razor sharp teeth viciously tore into the beast’s bone and flesh in a choreographed dance as time itself warped around its user. In that brief moment, the passage of time had slowed for the lynel yet accelerated for Jocelyn, and when the effects of the stand had ended abruptly, the lynel collapsed to its knees. After one last roar, it huffed greatly and fell into the mud, defeated. The starry constellations of teal-colored bioluminescence stretching across Minutes to Midnight’s lower torso and arms glowed like a soft beacon through the dreary darkness of the battlefield. Glowing dimly like the distant blades of fire eating away at the grass and lapping at the stone bridges at the feet of the guardians, Minutes to Midnight retreated into the body of its user. Nevertheless, its soft midnight blue aura enveloped Jocelyn’s body and encased the blade of their sword. With the aura surrounding them, Jocelyn blinked through time and rushed a small horde of stalizalfos, slicing through them and leaving behind a shower of fragmented bones.</p>
<p>     Guardian Stalkers and their elemental cousins crawled down from the mountains of Mable Ridge and bombarded Hylian forces with furious beams of light. Brick, mud, gravel, clouds of debris erupted when the beams exploded on the ground and blew away soldiers and monsters alike into the air. The assaults, too numerous to count, vaporized the dirt and trees, leaving behind trenches bathed in flames. All at once, the Hylians redirected their attention to the incoming guardians. “Attack the guardian!” Soldiers bellowed their orders above the constant clanking of metal upon metal and the screams of anger and agony mixed with feral roars and urgent beeps. One guardian stalker had reached the gate of Fort Hateno and obliterated the metal with a single attack. “Protect Fort Hateno from collapsing!” Zelda ducked from the falling bricks ripped from the top of the fort from a guardian’s attack. The blast knocked a handful of soldiers off of the elevated ledge and onto the ground behind the fort while others lost their balance and fell over the wall towards the guardian’s feet. Shortly before the attack connected, the captain of Fort Hateno’s guard threw himself over Zelda’s body and shielded her from the bits of sharp brick and embers raining upon them. The flash and burst of the guardians’ attacks struck through the darkness like quick flashes of lightning and superheated the air around its vaporizing gaze. Armor, flesh, earth--the guardians burned through them all and relentlessly crawled over the bodies and destruction of their rampage.</p>
<p>     One guardian stalker trained its swirling eye on Jolyne, lining up its next deadly shot to her forehead. She spotted it in time, however, and once she realized that it moved within her stand’s range, she summoned Stone Free to wrap several strands of string around the machine’s head. She launched herself towards the guardian, lined up the tip of her sword and speared the blade into the center of its eye. Fastening herself to the twitching and rotating mechanical body, she pushed the blade even deeper, wrenching it from side to side until sparks violently spurted out from the gaping hole. Its uncontrollable twitching and rotating parts grew more pronounced by the second, and when it started to glow dangerously blue through its cracks, Jolyne ditched her sword and hopped off moments before it exploded into shrapnel. The momentum of the blast propelled her forward into a soft patch of dirt that cushioned her side, however. Her hands stung with burns from the streaks of sparks that crashed into her flesh moments before she let go, but the falling rain somewhat abated the pain. She returned to her feet, dashing through the ripped earth and scanning around for another weapon. When she couldn’t find any unattended weapon that hadn’t been snapped in half nor buried so deep into the mud that she couldn't pull it out, she confronted a fire lizalfo wielding a forked lizal spear.</p>
<p>     The lizalfo, red as the sun at twilight on a hot day, dashed low to the ground in her direction, spear held parallel to its body and poised to ram through her abdomen. Webs of Stone Free’s strings grasped onto the shaft of the spear and forced the tip to the side; yet, the driving power behind the lizalfo’s attack had exceeded her expectations, so the jagged blades of the spear still brushed against the side of the flesh of her waist. Held firmly in place by complex string restraints, the lizalfo was helpless before Stone Free, which materialized and pounded the monster into an unrecognizable lump with her free arm. Jolyne yanked the spear away from the immobile lizalfo and turned to face another one of its kind approaching her with a jet of fire streaming out from its mouth. Within moments, Stone Free summoned a barrage of condensed string and whipped that monster along with others in the immediate vicinity all at once and smacked them into the dirt or into throngs of other enemies. Some targets harassing nearby soldiers were also knocked away. “Good work, Lady Jolyne!” One of the soldiers remarked with a hint of pride and gratefulness in his eyes. That lizalfo had cornered him and the blow from a previous assault knocked his helmet clear off of his head. He hadn’t found it since nor did he have any time or opportunity to retrieve it. “The rest of us will try to keep up!” </p>
<p>     Thick and steady streams of fire casted from a guardian enveloped in flames erupted between them as a wall of death that had taken them both by surprise. Neither realized just how close the guardian had approached unnoticed. Among the chaos of handling the cunning lizalfos that could easily skewer unsuspecting foes with their agility, the guardian slipped underneath their attention and could have delivered a lethal blow. The soldier’s nose suffered significant burns from being too close to the wall of fire, and the sudden heat only aggravated the burnt skin on Jolyne’s hands. Between the adrenaline and the rain, however, she refused to drop her weapon and instead retreated as the guardian’s head, and thus vision, turned and spread the flamethrower in her direction.</p>
<p>     Star Platinum seized a guardian stalker, and after delivering a flurry of punches to keep it stunned, he held it by a mechanical leg, smashed it into hordes of stalmonsters and tossed it towards other guardians. The massive mechanical body rolled and tumbled through scores of monsters, crushing them underneath its weight, until it crashed into other mechanical bodies and exploded in fireworks. One of the guardians, an electric guardian, it had smashed into, had an internal control mechanism disrupted from the violent collision, and scores of vibrant sparks flashed out of the robot, fatally zapping any monster nearby. In the meantime, Jotaro directed Star Platinum to punch through an incoming horde of stalizalfos, shattering their bones like a sledgehammer crushing rocks then he collected sharp shards of those fragmented bones and tossed them into the flesh of incoming monsters. </p>
<p>     Out of the corner of his eyes, however, he caught the jarring sight of a malice-infected lynel charging directly towards him. With its crushing blades boasting many jagged curves, it effortlessly sliced through the armor and spines of Hylian soldiers daring to stand in its way. Others merely broke their weapons against the beast and were either trampled by its hooves or impaled to death by opportunistic stalizalfos. The lynel, with Jotaro in its sights, charged ahead at full speed and opened its arms to welcome its foe in a deadly embrace. His head would make a nice trophy for its master, after all. Unflinching, Jotaro stared down the beast and waited a few more seconds for it to make its attack. The lynel may have boasted incredible strength, enough to knock away Hylians with a simple brush of its arm, but it met its match in Star Platinum. The stand quickly materialized and without wasting another second, Star Platinum had grabbed a metal shield from one of the stalizalfos he had ripped apart and parried the lynel’s simultaneous blows. He knocked the beast off-guard and kicked at its torso to force it to stand back a few more feet while still keeping it within his range. The following flurry of punches from the stand dealt a heavy blow to the face and torso of the beast, but he did not kill it. No, he merely stunned it for the thick sheet of malice swamp sheathing its head cushioned much of the blows and compelled it onwards. When Jotaro observed the swirling flash of fire welling up at the back of the monster’s throat, he dashed to the side and took cover behind a brick wall where he waited out the successive rounds of fire balls that followed. The lynel wouldn’t advance while it breathed fire vigorously, so Jotaro spotted a quiver fitted to the back of a nearby dead soldier. He emptied the quiver and loaded the arrows in Star Platinum’s hands. Unfortunately, his stand’s short range would ultimately prove close combat to be more dangerous than he could risk. Instead, he would be better off attacking the lynel decisively from a distance.</p>
<p>     The lynel stormed off in search of his worthy foe that it would cook alive, and although it had spotted Jotaro standing out from the wall, the blasts from several bomb arrows to the face finally ended its fight and life. In the aftermath of the blasts, Jotaro jogged through the diminishing smoke and swiped the swords the lynel had left behind. Bits of flesh and tissue still juicy with blood stuck to the blade’s edges. At any rate, he had options for long and close range attacks and could cleave through enemies with ease. The swarms of stalizalfos were unrelenting. They swallowed the plains and engaged Hylian forces at every turn. A hinox burdened by malice swamp stomped among them on its way to a gate of an outpost that it smashed into splinters and crushed much of the soldiers inside, so Jotaro pursued it there and readied a few flame arrows that Star Platinum tossed at its feet. Upon contact, flames engulfed the hinox’s feet and burned through its wooden shin guards, forcing it to fall down on its bottom and flail about to extinguish the flames. It turned towards Jotaro’s direction and with a hungry glare in its eye, it stormed over in his direction, thick fingers twitching and tongue licking at its foul lips, eager to take its next snack.</p>
<p>     Perhaps the vibrations of the hinox’s thunderous footsteps distracted him, but he didn’t notice the increasing intensity of vibrations approaching his position from behind. A Frost Talus and an Igneo Talus, two elemental stone giants covered in swampy malice blotches, dragged themselves across the burnt ground in his direction. They stood taller than even the lynels and on par with the hinoxes, and one was far more than capable of destroying a chunk of Fort Hateno with a single blow of a rocky arm. One body of subzero ice and the other of heated volcanic rock, no one could approach these titans without burning themselves and ripping off strips of flesh; even Star Platinum’s punches would damage Jotaro’s hands, but he needn’t abandon hope of toppling these walls. Nor should he think that he must topple them alone. Gyro and Caesar emerged from the chaos and pelted the titans of ice and fire with a duet of spinning steel balls and energy-charged bubbles, respectively. It proved enough to halt the taluses’ path, and subsequent rapid assaults on the weak point jutting from their tops knocked them into the dirt and neutralized the elements coating their massive bodies. A few more strikes drilling into their weak points finished the titans off, exploding them into a pile of gravel and loose ore when the malice erupted out of them. In the midst of it all, Gyro had to fight back the temptation of pocketing some of that ore, especially the diamonds that tempted him the most with its rare glitter distinguished among the rubble. On the other hand, he may as well take a few. This was a good opportunity to secure some semblance of a future if he survives here.</p>
<p>     If he survives.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Jocelyn rounded the corner of an outpost gate overrun with enemy forces and sprinted inside. They brandished a bow and in one motion, pulled an arrow taut and fired it into a lizalfo’s head, sending it tumbling down from an elevated ledge. Guardian scouts, however, rushed them and sliced through their bow with their enhanced ancient axes, and as another readied a second strike, Minutes to Midnight materialized and froze those machines with the stasis rune of the modified Sheikah Slate kept at Jocelyn’s hip. That bought Jocelyn a few precious seconds to retaliate. Therefore, Minutes to Midnight slashed and punched at the frozen guardians in tandem with Jocelyn’s sword strikes, and when stasis dispelled, the accumulated energy afflicted upon the machines dismantled them into a pile of smashed gears that caved in on themselves. Past the guardian scouts, however, a vicious thick beam of malice energy greeted Jocelyn and knocked them back into an outpost wall. Harbinger DIO launched itself into a deadly dance and churned up the earth in front of it with its four seething hot blades. The stasis rune would not be fully recharged for another few moments, and in the last second, Jocelyn sped to the side and received a shallow cut to their cheek just below their left eye. The flesh surrounding the wound, however, burned as if they were attacked with a blowtorch. Streaks of crimson blood seeped away at the corners of the burned wound and smeared across their cheek and chin. Even still, they persisted, driven by the want of escape from the thought of failure inevitably sinking in and the crushing weight of expectations placed squarely upon their shoulders. Indeed, King Rhoam, at the advent of the Calamity, reminded Jocelyn and their kin of their sworn duty given to them at birth to fight and secure the future of Hyrule. For the sake of the princess and for the sake of justice. Despite this, Jocelyn resigned themself to the fact that this difficult battle served to be their punishment for their great sin of betrayal. They parried another heavy blow from Harbinger DIO, snuck in strikes to clog the machine’s gears whenever it dropped its guard, and endured the barrage of violence and the myriad of shallow cuts lining their skin.</p>
<p>     Harbinger DIO fought quite unlike the guardian scouts they had dispatched on the way to the outpost--it reacted to Jocelyn’s presence more aggressively by lunging at them and cleaving any object, be it the wooden outpost gates or stone walls and racks of weapons and supplies, when it missed its target. Always hungry for blood and never satisfied, each segment of its body whirled around, and like a saw, it sliced through all obstacles in its path towards Jocelyn. The rotation made the machine buzz with energy at such a heavy force that convinced them it could glide right through their shield like a hot knife through butter. So, Jocelyn kept their distance, eyes focused forward on the buzzing blade mill while feet took flat steps backward. The machine's movement speed only seemed to increase every second it hounded them, forcing Jocelyn to attempt an attack. They hardly desired to become minced meat, after all. They stumbled backwards into a weapon rack holding an assortment of soldier’s spears. That must be the Goddess’s sign for an attack, as it dawned on them. They snatched a spear, twirled it around their hand to adjust to the feeling of its weight, and in a decisive move, they tossed the spear blade first towards the incoming machine.</p>
<p>     Guided by the Goddess’s hand, the spearhead lodged itself into the eye of Harbinger DIO, bringing its deadly pursuit to an end, but it retreated beyond the walls of the outpost. Jocelyn stood alone within the broken outpost while the chaos and noise of the battle lingered in the air just beyond the walls of splintered wood and chipped brick. Danger surrounded them; yet, their body would not move. Covered in cold-sweat and buzzing with shivers of adrenaline, they froze in the aftermath of death’s gaze and the sudden flash of their life to this very moment. It was the closest they had ever drifted to death’s clutches. The searing sensation of the machine’s hot blade shearing shallowly through their skin evoked a shudder from them in the brief moment of calm. If they had acted a moment later, or slipped while handling the spear, they pictured their relatives--what remained of them, anyway--finding them in sliced layers of flesh and bone saturated with blood. Perhaps the Goddess watched over them, even now, with Hyrule left as burning ruins.</p>
<p>     They leaned against a wall and slid to the ground. Harbinger DIO had left them another gift--a deep gash on their left arm running parallel to the bone from the shoulder and stopping about halfway to their elbow. Joestar blood spilled down the flesh and stained the armor plates with smears of dark orangish-red. The wound and pain escaped their notice until the calm of the storm found them resting and gathering what meager strength remained. They couldn’t even raise their shield because the aggravation of the wound numbed much of their arm. Without a means of defense, continual fighting would be a fool’s errand. They needed to prioritize finding Josuke; he could heal any wound with Crazy Diamond, and if he remained alive, they would manage to find him. No other choice would be viable: fighting in a poor condition would be a death sentence, especially if Harbinger DIO or the mage Astor emerged from the enemy ranks.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The guardians persisted. Electric guardians stumbled into a crowd of Hylian soldiers and discharged at once, shocking the life out of them. Frost guardians and their fire counterparts froze large swathes of land and torched the bricks of Fort Hateno and Kakariko Bridge, respectively. Choruses of laser beams blasted off chunks of the fort’s wall, picking off more archers occupying the top. Soldiers slayed a guardian that had invaded the fort, but several more waited outside for their turn to invade. Zelda descended to ground-level upon the arrival of more guardians, and, with an upgraded Sheikah Slate in hand, she casted rune after rune, halting charging guardians in their paths and smashing into them with cryonsis pillars. Her soldiers had pleaded with her not to take to the battlefield, but she saw no other choice in the face of the clear fact that Hyrule saw the losing side of battle. Bodies flew in every direction in the aftermath of lynels brutally swinging their massive crushers and taluses crashing their boulder-like bodies into the earth. Endless clouds of dirt and fire obscured her vision of the field and concealed the true size of the enemy army which appeared to only grow larger; soldiers, who remained half buried into the mud and wet soil yet still alive with injuries and pain beyond belief, wailed miserably in their final moments. She could stand by no longer and watch her people die by the masses. When a bomb arrow had bursted into a fireball, however, she found a guardian overflowing with DIO’s poisonous malice suddenly encroached within a few meters behind her. It flew into a spiraling rampage at the sight of her small form and closed the distance between them in moments. Eager to dismantle her limbs first from her body, its mechanical arms latched onto her wrist and pinned her down onto her back. She yelped in pain at the force knocking her directly onto a rough assortment of fragmented bricks which jabbed into her skin. Another mechanical claw decisively latched onto her neck and squeezed just enough that she gasped for breath. A second guardian joined its companion and latched onto Zelda’s legs, and the guardian caked in globs of malice starting pulling on her arm. With her free hand the guardians hadn’t touched, she yanked and attempted to pry the claws off of her until the pain of her shoulder joint stretching became too much to bear. She screamed. The Goddess had abandoned her, even after all of her efforts to keep together the shattered pieces of her doomed kingdom. Her hand moved to her shoulder, clutching it in a vain attempt to appease the awful pain of being ripped apart.</p>
<p>     Convinced that her thread would be cut here, she hadn’t noticed the whirling sound of two steel balls rapidly approaching her. Perhaps due to another miracle of the Goddess, two steel balls buried themselves within the cores of the guardians and prompted a series of internal explosions that ceased their actions at once. Zelda remained pinned underneath the mechanical husks of the defunct guardians, hoisted into place by their paralyzed legs, and shielded somewhat from the rain endlessly pouring from the heavens. She tugged and pried off the guardian’s claws from her wrist with considerable effort. Her ankles, however, were a different story--the space between her and the guardian’s body overhead was too narrow to allow her to crawl underneath and free herself. Additionally, she feared that the guardian’s legs would sink deeper into the mud, narrowing the gap further until they crushed her. Fret with anxiety, she followed the path of the rotating steel balls as they borrowed themselves out of the ancient metal husks and returned into the palms of their owner--Gyro Zeppeli. She looked up to him and from her limited angle, she recognized that he was wounded. Blood dripped down the corner of his mouth and over his left eye and temple from a shallow wound to the head. He approached her on foot with a slight limp in his walk, but she didn’t see his horse anywhere. She suspected that the enemies brought a blow upon him so fierce that it knocked him clear off of Valkyrie.</p>
<p>     “Princess! Are you alright? Let me get a look at you,” He dropped to his knees and examined her condition. A few small cuts here and there; nothing too deep nor serious. The claws of the guardian left an aggravated red patch of skin on her wrist and neck, and she kept massaging her shoulder. Was she hurt there too? With no distinct trail nor smear of blood, it might not be an obvious wound. He removed her hand and inspected her shoulder anyway and noted that she flinched when he, by chance, applied careful force to the most tender spot.</p>
<p>     “Easy, easy!” She whined and pushed away his hand. “If you had arrived a few moments later, I feared that they were going to tear me apart. Thank you for saving my life, but my shoulder--it’s still so tender,” she slipped an arm underneath the guardian’s empty husk and pointed towards her feet. “And my feet, Gyro--they still have a hold on me.” She wiggled her legs to test the restraint, but she barely moved them in the guardian’s firm hold. “I can’t move.” She flinched when the guardian’s body jerked downwards without warning, its legs sinking into the mud. “Oh Goddess, the guardian is collapsing underneath its own weight. I’m going to be crushed…! Quickly, Gyro! My legs!” He swiftly crawled to the other side of the guardian and spotted her feet still trapped by the clutch of the dead machine. He tested the grip with his fingers, but the metal points of the grasps remained buried into her ankle. Prying them out would be no simple matter--a gentle tug earned him a pained moan from the princess and trembling from her legs. The grasps embedded into her flesh seemed to be latched there; carelessly forcing them out would likely rip out chunks of her flesh and worsen the bleeding. Instead, he hatched another idea: he slammed a spinning steel ball into her legs and the vibrations therein flattened her limbs. The clasps slipped out of her with gentle coaxing, and when he confirmed that all of them were removed, he released the vibrations, and her legs returned to their original shape. The blood oozing and flowing from her open wounds still remained an issue, but he decided that was the least worrisome issue for the moment. Before the guardian could sink further into the mud, he next aimed to get her out of this cage.</p>
<p>     “Lift up your arms for me.”</p>
<p>     “Careful; don’t touch my shoulder.” Hesitant and mindful of her most tender sore areas, she slipped out her arms above her from underneath the guardian. Gyro reached in and grabbed onto her beyond the elbows, but when he started pulling, she whimpered in pain and retracted the one arm that the guardians had threatened to rip off. “Ow! It hurts! It’s too much! Stop, stop!” She retrieved her arm from Gyro and decided resolutely that the better move was to avoid aggravating the stretched muscle and strained joint. “There must be another way...There has to be another way out of here. Perhaps if you could--”</p>
<p>     “Princess,” he cut her off curtly, bluntly refusing to hide irritation in his voice and in his face. “This might be rude of me to say, but I’m going to say it anyway: suck it up! We are out here fighting and dying horrible bloody deaths--all for you. Some of us have died just to bring you here.” She caught the dark look in his eyes, and when she recognized the pain reflected within them, it had dawned on her: the retreat beyond the Dueling Peaks that she had ordered cost him the life of someone dear to his heart. That fallen young Joestar struggling to breathe yet still clinging onto the last fleeting moments of his life upon the banks of the Squabble River. Sacred Joestar blood flooded from the fresh wounds of his battered body and changed the color of the river into that of dark wine. As she shamefully recalled, he loathed to embrace his destiny and assume the role of one of Hyrule’s greatest heroes. Nevertheless, he died before Gyro’s eyes as a direct consequence of the destiny his bloodline afforded him, and she understood the justification behind Gyro’s rage and urgency. It was simply another of her failures added to an ever-growing list. “Now, give me your damn arms. I can get you out.” With a nod and heavy breathing in anticipation of the great sting in her shoulder, she slipped her arms above her once again. He leaned in and grasped her arms beyond her elbows, and aided by a forceful pull powered by his own weight, her body partially slipped out from underneath its mechanical prison. She cried out from the sudden sharp pain in her shoulder, but she let him continue and coped with the pain by trembling her legs. However, her will broke within a few seconds when she felt that her limb could be torn off again. Before she could retract her arm and plead with him to take a break in pulling, however, he reached lower and hooked his arms around her chest. In a decisive motion, he dragged her entire body out from underneath the machine.</p>
<p>     “Thank you,” she relinquished some stress when she breathed out her words and promptly worked her way up to her feet. She couldn’t meet his gaze yet when she imagined the spectacle of that dying Joestar youth, and so her eyes remained trained on the ground at his feet. “And I must apologize,”</p>
<p>     “For…?”</p>
<p>     “You have recently lost someone very dear to your heart.  I remember seeing pain in your eyes when you departed to Kakariko Village, and now I understand the reason why: you needed to give him a proper burial. He had sacrificed his life so that I could make it this far, but perhaps what is more troubling is that he gave everything for a cause that had trapped him. All because he was a Joestar descendant.” Gyro remained silent; the shadows hiding his eyes hinted to Zelda that he recalled those moments when he held his dying husband in his arms.</p>
<p>     “The most you can do now to honor him and his sacrifice is to keep fighting, and to awaken whatever gift the Goddess left for you already.” She met his hard gaze and nodded solemnly, but without guidance on the correct path and after exhausting all of her options during the last ten years, she still wrestled with doubt of her own abilities and the uncertainty of the diminishing hope left for Hyrule. Added to all of this, the guilt of Joestar blood spilt in the wake of her constant failures resided at the heart of her concerns. “It’s about time you fulfilled your own destiny, Princess. Just like he did.” He departed to handle another incoming guardian stalker with its eye leering at the fort and left Zelda behind in her silence.</p>
<p>     “Gyro,” she continued even after he moved well out of earshot and watched his valiance in battle. “I truly am sorry. This is all my fault.” With a fist clenched at her chest, she looked on at him fighting the endless hordes of monsters until he too vanished amid the chaos.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Jolyne, who had narrowly escaped the onslaught of a fire guardian, pulled arrows taut against the string Stone Free peeled from her arm and fired them into a crowd of monsters. Round after round, she fired volleys of arrows from the makeshift bow of her arm and swept through ranks of monsters. If any of them approached her to take advantage of her perceived vulnerability, Stone Free’s tough wires whipped and sliced through their bodies, battering the bones and halting their advance. She soon realized her limitations: Stone Free’s strings lost much of their integrity the farther they reached from her. They became brittle at a distance of a handful of meters away from Jolyne and so sensitive to movement that they easily snapped under slight pressure when monsters brushed past. And Jolyne paid the price when the snapped strings translated to open wounds left behind by peeled flesh on her body. Consequently, she kept her strings close to her when the army of monsters became dense and only risked long-range stand combat when their numbers were considerably thinned. She had accumulated persistent wounds--mild burns to her palms and shallow punctures to her waist and arms left behind by metal weapons and her strings snapping underneath the weight of heavier foes. She had learned a hard lesson from one such wound when she had used her strings to trip a hinox. She bound its legs together with layers of string and forced it to topple over with its own massive weight, but she didn’t expect it to flail about after it smashed into the dirt. The colossal porcine brute snapped through Stone Free’s strings as if ripping through blades of grass, and it consequently stripped away lines of flesh from her back. The wound, still fresh and raw, throbbed until he stumbled and rested her hands on her knees in submission to the scorching pain. Blood seeped through the fabric of her shirt, and as it cooled in the rain, the open wound stuck to the fabric and only worsened the unpleasant feeling of angry red skin searing its presence into her brain. At times, she believed that the rest of her skin on her back threatened to peel off, little by little with each movement of her arms and flex of her muscles.</p>
<p>     The end of the battle remained out of sight. Although the monster ranks have been thinned out somewhat since the start, the most powerful among them remained stomping about on the field, lurking within the walls of the outposts, and seeking to execute an injured Joestar with utmost joy. Jolyne blocked an incoming attack with a thick cord of Stone Free’s strings, and her stand pounded the invader into the dirt without a second thought.</p>
<p>
  <em>     Thunk! </em>
</p>
<p>     An arrow penetrated her back, near her right shoulder. The culmination of pain aggravating her previous and vicious back wound pushed her onto her knees. A cunning lizalfo slipped out of her sight and snuck to the ledges of an outpost to train its arrow upon her. She could reach back for it and try to rip it out before any poison escaped into her veins, but alas--it had lodged itself within a position where she couldn’t properly grasp it with either hand. When Stone Free tugged on it, the pain caused her limbs to tremble and forced her to stop. So it must have struck a major nerve. She accepted the injury under the realization that she could still fight, so long as she kept her right arm as still as she could. Moving it even slightly flexed her back muscles and twisted the arrowhead against the flesh.</p>
<p>     Another arrow, launched elsewhere from the crowd, sailed through the air and sniped the lizalfo from the outpost ledge as it readied its next attack towards its original target--her neck. Jotaro emerged from the dust and chaos around her, a handful of arrows clutched in his fist, and he promptly jogged to his daughter’s side. “Jolyne!” His steady, usually collected voice had given way somewhat to evident concern. “Can you stand?” She scoffed bitterly at his question and refused his outstretched hand; she pushed herself to her feet on her own.</p>
<p>     The battlefield was the last place he ever wanted to see his daughter, and if he could help it, he would take her to the farthest point away from Fort Hateno. But she had insisted on fighting and wrestling this Calamity into submission if it meant that she could protect her friends and home. On some visceral level, she mused, she had considered protecting her own father, the man she had learned to hate through his consistent absences in her young life. At least, she believed that she hated him--this careless man who had abandoned her without a reason why--but in the end, she couldn’t bring her heart to agree. Perhaps a shred of her heart, stubbornly hopeful for her father’s return, loved him enough to fight hard and protect his life. She never understood her heart’s desires. He knew of her perceived reality of him, but despite this, he regarded her with fatherly affection, even when he remained silent. For far too long, he had miserably removed himself from her life in the name of research. He even convinced himself that it was for the best--he needed to be prepared for the Calamity’s arrival mostly to assure himself that he would see her through this inevitable hellscape. To make up for his absence, he would protect her until his body collapsed.</p>
<p>     “I don’t need your help,” she spat and matched his gaze, but her eyes didn’t reflect the coldness in her voice. “I was doing fine holding them off, until that sneaky bastard over there caught me by surprise. I could’ve handled it.” Although his expression hardly changed, his eyes narrowed somewhat. He examined her injuries and noted her heavy breathing, but the arrow sticking out of her shoulder alarmed him.</p>
<p>     “Jolyne, I want you to retreat.”</p>
<p>     “What? You know I can’t do that! Look around you, Dad! We’re not even close to finished yet!”</p>
<p>     “I want you to retreat beyond Fort Hateno and regroup after the battle. Look at your wounds, Jolyne. They’re obviously taking a toll on you and need to be treated.” She rolled her eyes and took one step to turn away, but he caught her wrist and her attention. “Listen to me, Jolyne! As your father, I want you to do this. Please.” She looked at him with a half-hearted glare which softened when she recognized the concern in his eyes. She couldn’t muster the nerve to refuse his request, but the prospect of fulfilling his request didn’t thrill her either--it would injure her pride. While she only wanted to keep her father near her for a little while longer, now they had to part once again.</p>
<p>     “...Fine.” With a scowl, she took her hand back from him. “Just,” she swallowed and met his gaze with softer eyes. “You better make sure you get out of here. Alive. Or I, I won’t forgive you.” She jogged towards the fort with her father following her nearby to live for another day, and that was all Jotaro could ask for in the moment. Like the princess, he feared the uncertainty of the battle. DIO’s forces pushed ever deeper past the line held by Hyrulean forces and dismantled the front gate, piece by piece, but Jotaro doubled his efforts to keep his daughter alive in the glimpse of hope that she would see the world waiting beyond the Calamity.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Jocelyn sheathed their sword and raced across the burning brick of Kakariko Bridge, pushing their sore legs to their absolute limit. Soldiers shouted with renewed vigor, revitalized with a hint of fear and a surge of adrenaline when Hyrule’s most fiendish nightmare materialized upon the charred earth. Calamity DIO advanced towards the fort. Cloaked in magenta and golden flames, he towered over the Hylians like a pillar of unnatural fire spiraling above and cleaving through the night sky. Through the wafts of flame whipping around his body armored by ancient metal, his appearance whispered reflections of his fabled human form he abandoned countless lifetimes ago. The corrosive swamps of malice transformed him into a titan among monsters: ancient armor adorned with massive spikes protected most of his body, and thick blankets of malice generously coated his entire body. Arrows, elemental or not, spears, and all other weaponry the Hyrulean army could craft snapped and shattered against his impenetrable body. As his answer, vicious fingers of magenta lightning burst forth from his back and torso and burned his opponents, killing many and injuring others still. And so, with orbs gleaming orange-gold from his eye sockets and piercing into the hearts of the soldiers too frightened to stand in his way, he continued towards the fort. Clouds and chains of burning malice lashed out from his body and struck down the soldiers caught within a few meters from him. In no time, the malice seeped underneath their plates and chains of armor, through the threads of clothing, and stripped them bare of flesh until only decaying bones remained tossed into the mud. Calamity DIO stomped through these remains of Zelda’s forces; his eyes, blazing with golden-orange rage, fixed themselves upon the front face of the fort in the direction of the princess who surely hid there. Vicious winds saturated with embers of malice swept away in his path--monster or Hylian--and with each step, he savored the tiny moments preceding his impending victory. The defense of the Joestars had been breached and crumbled away before his eyes, so he advanced, unburdened by the presence of his once greatest threat.</p>
<p>     “It’s Calamity DIO! Hold the line!” The remaining soldiers, stunned at the sight of the ancient evil made into unnatural flesh approaching them undaunted, fought with themselves to keep heart. Their weapons were simply not effective. Their numbers dwindled at an alarming rate. They understood that nothing could challenge the apex of the Calamity. <em> If only they had reacted a little sooner </em> , some lamented. <em> If only they had acted a little differently in their preparations, perhaps they could have saved their king from the maw of death when the Calamity first struck and spared the light of his wisdom from its extinguished fate. </em> Soldiers, with bones broken underneath the weight of the debris from Kakariko Bridge, helplessly watched Calamity DIO advance towards the fort, and with heavy hearts, they accepted that their doom was all but certain. Triumphant moblins hoisted the bodies of other soldiers, who barely clung to life, into the air by their necks and celebrated their presumptive victory--and next feast--with a chorus of emphatic roars. The beaten and battered bodies of even more soldiers floated down Lake Siela underneath Kakariko Bridge and accumulated in such a pile that strained the water’s flow. The dark clouds of the sky glowed a sickening shade of crimson resembling blood in reverence of the arrival of the bane to the Hylian Royal Family. “Regroup!” Soldiers, who kept shards of hope in their hearts, shouted among their scarce ranks and raked across the field in loose configurations. “To Fort Hateno! Protect the princess!”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Upon the cliffs of the Dueling Peaks overlooking the Big Twin Bridge, Father Enrico Pucci, the priest of Calamity DIO, watched with silent reverence the endgame of his lord’s siege on Fort Hateno through binoculars. “Everything is as foretold. As it should be.” He spoke to the sorcerer crouched in front of him at the edge of the rocky shelf. As the self-proclaimed Prophet of Doom, Astor took in the battle with satisfaction. The fruit of his and Pucci’s labor--the two most powerful and authoritative allies devoted to the Calamity--had just come into fruition. The Hylians underneath them scurried across the ravaged earth like ants, which sparked delight in Astor’s calculating eyes.</p>
<p>     “And so begins the end of Hyrule, a long prosperous golden kingdom brought to its knees by the Calamity,” he declared with giddy anticipation blatant in his voice. “Their fate is sealed; there is nothing more that they can do. Joestar blood already soaks the earth. They will either perish here in the grip of Calamity DIO or die in the days to come.” He observed Pucci as the priest kept close watch over the events of the battle below. “You’ve done well for a Hylian, Father Pucci. How must it feel to know that you’ve spilled the blood of so many of your fellow Hylians?”</p>
<p>    “Calamity DIO,” Pucci started immediately, “is the amalgamation of Hyrule’s bloody history of greed and hatred. I believe that he could cleanse this world in a show of fire and push it beyond--into a new world. I live to fulfill that dream,” his eyes caught the image on a particular soldier making a beeline past a large slab of rock beyond Kakariko Bridge and into Ash Swamp. Blonde hair, wounded on the arm, and with the same steely determination in their actions that he had witnessed in the other Joestars--he recognized the figure as Jocelyn Jones sprinting towards their death. “What is this? A lone Joestar descendant boldly challenging Calamity DIO? Such a fool; they don’t even realize that it’s useless. There is nothing left for the Joestar lineage. The world will soon be wiped clean of them to achieve a perfect reality.”</p>
<p>    “One more victory for Calamity DIO.” Astor followed Jocelyn’s path with his eyes, an expression of pity on his ghastly face. “Fate did not grant me the honor of offering Joestar blood to the Calamity, but it matters not. The sacrifice comes to the Calamity itself! If only fate could grant me the privilege of seeing the light fade from this Joestar descedant’s eyes.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Jocelyn failed to find Josuke anywhere on the battlefield. The thought that he could have been killed at this point persisted among the whirlwind of their mind, so they switched priorities. Since Calamity DIO marched towards the fort where they last saw the princess overseeing the battle, they headed in that direction. Without the Goddess’s gift of a stand, Zelda remained a prime target for the enemy, and while their wounds, both old and the newer ones they accumulated in brief skirmishes with monsters across the swamp, bogged them down and sapped much of their strength, their obligation to protect the princess, as demanded of them by their bloodline, compelled them forward. Yet, it was a duty that they might be the last to fulfill. They hadn’t seen the rest of their relatives since the initial clashing outside of the fort but neither had they given up hope. They held onto the faith that their relatives were skilled enough to survive a while longer and fight in the name of Hyrule. In the name of her princess.</p>
<p>    In the name of their fallen cousin, Johnny.</p>
<p>    Although Jocelyn did not witness the attack that claimed the younger Joestar’s life, they recalled the grim aftermath all the same: the tears welling up in Jolyne’s eyes which she tried to choke back, the rage and grief in Jonathan’s and Joseph’s faces, and the somber darkness and pain in Jotaro’s gaze. On that day, the atmosphere of the war and the hope of Hyrule had begun to spoil. Motivated by duty alone no longer, the surviving Joestar descendants and their allies retreated with fear and urgency in their downward spiral of anger, grief, and desperation. Among the most stricken by the loss, Gyro Zeppeli promptly vanished from the Hyrulean army’s ranks to Kakariko Village with Johnny’s remains, and Zelda hadn’t the heart to stop him.</p>
<p>    Calamity DIO noticed Jocelyn rapidly approaching from his left flank and discharged a cloud of malice in their direction, but they narrowly dodged to the left of it. With his weak-point unclear and unaided by the other Joestar descendants, victory remained uncertain. If only the remaining Joestar descendants could unite in the darkest hour to topple the swirling flames of malice, they would snatch their future back from the greedy claws of the monsters. But Jocelyn had no need for wishful thinking. Zelda stood straight and tall in front of the gates to the fort with eyes wide and captivated on her greatest enemy. Along the way, Jocelyn was blind to the sights of several enemy archers and received several arrows pelting into their body. Shoulders, waist, and legs alike, the arrows sliced through flesh and miraculously missed internal organs. Would the Goddess be so cruel as to condemn them to die a slow death in the crumbling ruins of their kingdom? Streaks of blood drained down their legs and arms, smeared across their chest, and a final arrow grazed across their left earlobe.</p>
<p>    Guardian stalkers scurried across the burning remnants of the field, on constant patrol for survivors, and aimed for Jocelyn pushing forward towards the fort. This time, Jocelyn had spotted them fast approaching and summoned Minutes to Midnight to clip every particle of their body through time at such a rapid pace to force the guardians’ laser beams to phase through their body. They cheated certain death in this way, but their stand could not protect them from the heat nor the force of the subsequent blast. Thrown into the mud, they slipped and struggled to find their way to their feet, prompting Zelda to cross the distance between them instead. “JoJo,” Jocelyn became the only barrier standing between the princess and heir of Hyrule and Calamity DIO’s entourage of guardians and refused to budge an inch even when Zelda tugged at their uninjured arm. “Save yourself! Go! I’ll be fine; don’t worry about me. Run!” But Jocelyn refused. They shrugged off Zelda’s arm and threw themself onto their unsteady feet with sword in hand. Against their instincts, they faced down the guardian stalker climbing over a hill and the husks of inactive guardians.</p>
<p>    “Princess, I can buy you more time,” they croaked out as their lungs burned and their head felt dizzier by the second. Zelda recognized their skin gleaming paler in the crimson light, wide pupils, and eyes growing fuller with clusters of red blood vessels. As Jocelyn wedged themself in between the princess and Calamity DIO, their breathing shallowed; if a strong wind had blown through the area, it might knock them over.</p>
<p>    “Jocelyn, you are not well,” Zelda breathed and stood near the Joestar descendant but restrained herself from touching them. “I can see it clearly, even now. Please, you must retreat beyond the fort! If not, then I fear--”</p>
<p>    “I-I can’t do it,” Jocelyn interrupted, their voice slurred slightly with their vision slowly blurring out of focus. They had lost their balance briefly yet caught themself before they fell over, but the sword they wielded only seemed to grow heavier in their grip. “I just can’t do it,” they continued even when Zelda held onto their uninjured arm and leaned in closer because their voice diminished into a soft utterance. “Goddess knows I still want to, but I can’t run away now--not again. Not again. Not ever,” they coughed emptily, “again. I’m sorry; I’m so sorry,”</p>
<p>    “Jocelyn, something is wrong with you. There may still be time if you run beyond the fort--”</p>
<p>    “No! No, I deserve this; I do,”</p>
<p>    “Jocelyn?” Jocelyn blinked once then twice to refocus their eyes that have spiraled out of focus.</p>
<p>    “Princess, retreat to the Hateno Outpost and find Jotaro. He’ll know what to do--he always does.” They looked up and observed the guardian bear down towards them. “I never wanted to do this,” their voice quivered as the tip of their sword dipped into the ground in front of them. “but I’ve been forced to do it. I deserve this. Oh Goddess, I let him die!” As a tear escaped Jocelyn’s eye, death’s red point fixed itself squarely upon their chest. The overwhelming presence of the guardian glowing as red as malice paralyzed Zelda, leaving her little else to do but to watch as the rest of her hope became snuffed out.</p>
<p>     ‘<em>They’re dying for you </em>,’</p>
<p>     Gyro’s words echoed in her mind when she looked upon Jocelyn’s unyielding defense in the short remainder of their life. Perhaps the Goddess Herself guided her next actions, but she dashed forward in front of Jocelyn and reached out towards the guardian in defiance. No longer would she stand aside and witness the Joestar descendants die one by one.</p>
<p>     ‘<em>I must protect...everyone! </em>’</p>
<p>     Golden light cloaked her entire body and burst forth from her hand as a sphere rapidly expanding outward from her palm. It continued expanding endlessly, swallowing Jocelyn, Zelda, and the offending guardians in its path. Those monsters caught in the orb of light were smited without delay while bits of the earth launched into the air in the startling wake of Zelda’s stand. When the bubble of light ruptured, a pillar of blinding light took its place and forced Calamity DIO’s advance to a decisive end. Weakened when Zelda’s light stripped away several layers of malice, DIO saw no other option than retreat; in one swift blow, she had burned through his armor and disturbed the core energy completing his body underneath, and he recognized, despite his great ambitions, that if he refused to yield, she might have flipped his certain victory into a narrow defeat. The rest of his body evaporated into clouds of coiling, crackling rancor which surged in the direction of Hyrule Castle beyond the Dueling Peaks. The malice inhabiting the guardians, however, became flushed out of the machines, leaving behind husks of metal that collapsed into the soft dirt. Zelda retracted her hand and stared at its back with curiosity and confusion mixing in her eyes. The golden glow of her contours waned, yet she could hardly believe that she witnessed it at all. “Was...Was that…? The power…” The Goddess’s answer to her deepest fears not only illuminated her form but it banished the shadows of doubt in her heart. In spite of that, she could not afford to waste time to ponder over it. She turned around when she heard something hit the ground behind her with heavy force coupled with sharp clanks of metal--Jocelyn had fallen to the ground in utter defeat. “No, no…” she rushed to Jocelyn’s side and nudged them, tenderly at first, and grew more distraught when she received no response. In fact, she inspected Jocelyn’s hands and wrists and observed that they grew ever colder; alarmed, she came to realize that Jocelyn’s life faded before her eyes, and nothing she could do or say elicited a response. “Jocelyn! Get up!” Ever defiant, she pulled Jocelyn into her arms , cradled their face and wiped away streaks and smears of blood and dirt, but they remained dead to the world. For a brief moment, she thought that she had spotted movement behind Jocelyn’s eyelids, but even so, every second wasted brought the blade closer to their thread. When she looked over Jocelyn’s body, she noted purple colored liquid weeping out of their punctured arrow wounds--the same liquid she had extracted from scavenged monster horns in her study within the castle. The monsters dipped those arrows in monster extract, a known poison in its rawest form. Their body still held many of those arrows. The rest of time slipped through her fingers.</p>
<p>     ‘<em>He died for you. </em>’</p>
<p>     “No, no…” She sobbed over Jocelyn’s limp body in a fit of regret. If she had just tried a little harder--fought a little harder--acted a little quicker--she could have spared both Jocelyn and Johnny, and even beyond. Through her despair, however, a disembodied voice echoed from her thoughts and addressed her. She pulled back from Jocelyn’s body and looked down at them, thinking that the voice had whispered from their mouth, but their motionless lips directed her elsewhere. Instead, Zelda looked towards Jocelyn’s hand, and her attention snapped to a ghostly webbed hand clipping through and overlapping Jocelyn’s with fingers thin and long, slender spear-like claws protruding at the ends. It glowed with soft ethereal light of midnight blue, attracting Zelda’s attention until she held it delicately in her own hand. “Their stand…” The fading hand of Minutes to Midnight mirrored the warmth of Jocelyn’s own, and as its master faded away, it, too, cooled to the touch and slipped further out of sight. Jocelyn clung still to the thread of life and rekindled some hope in Zelda’s heart. “So they can...They can still be saved?” She directed her question to the stand, and while it steadily faded out from her view and touch, it squeezed upon her hand. Although she couldn’t save Johnny, she aimed to save Jocelyn.</p>
<p>     From the edge of the swamps a considerable distance away, Caesar witnessed the massive dome of light erupt and pointed it out to his cousin, Gyro, and while its blinding splendor forced them to avert their eyes, they had bet that Zelda had awakened her stand at last. They hustled past the husks of guardians, that weakly flashing their activated lights as the last bits of malice drained from them, and over the smoldering rubble until they reached her. “Princess!” Caesar called, and while Zelda appeared to be mostly fine, their eyes focused upon Jocelyn’s unmoving body, prompting them to imagine the worst possible outcome. Even the advanced medicine and technology the Zeppelis developed for generations, however revolutionary and miraculous, could not revive the deceased. “Princess! Are you alright?”</p>
<p>     “Take Jocelyn to the Shrine of Resurrection,” she addressed them, eyes blazing with new resolve and unshakeable nerves. Even in the eleventh hour, the Goddess provided a way forward through the never-ending nightmare. “If you don’t get them there immediately, we are going to lose them forever! Is that clear? So make haste and go! Their life is now in your hands!”</p>
<p>     The pounding torrent rain diluted the blood of Hylians splashed into the mud and filth, Gyro and Caesar received the body of the Joestar descendant and departed to the isolated Great Plateau far to the west of the Dueling Peaks. History for ages to come would recount, with great awe and hope, the Miracle of Fort Hateno as the saving grace of Hyrule.</p>
<p>~*~*~*</p>
<p>Underneath a darkened sky and a merciless storm that consumed much of Central Hyrule, Gyro and Caesar pressed on westwards, beyond the Dueling Peaks, with the body of the fallen Joestar descendant and their sights set upon the Great Plateau towering in the distance. At the plateau’s base, a forest of fires blazed on despite the rain as the monster hordes rampaged through Outpost Town and the surrounding settlements. The rivers of fire and blood flushed out soldiers, merchants, and surviving civilians while their homes and businesses burned to the ground. Miraculously, the cover of rain shielded the pair of Zeppelis from the attention of moblins hunting for them within the Forest of Time, and they approached the Great Plateau with utmost caution to throw the bokoblins that hounded their trail into confusion amidst a maze of trees. Eyes opened and scanning around and ears alert, they breached the forest and beelined to the northeast face of the plateau, dashing into the grand entrance as soon as they reached it. The flights of stairs seemingly never ended. Step after step, they carried the body through the narrow corridors, each step placing more exhaustion in their legs and weighing them down. But they couldn’t afford to entertain the feeling, despite the great burden straining their muscles. As Gyro carried the body upon his back, he monitored its slowing heartbeat by the vibrations weakly moving through the clammy cold skin. Upon reaching the top of the plateau and continuing along the remains of the grand staircase, he slipped upon the steps slickened with rainwater and would have toppled over under the body’s weight if Caesar hadn’t caught him. The road to the Shrine of Resurrection stretched upwards over a gradual hill and beyond a grand staircase ascending to the plaza in front of the Temple of Time. In the highlands past the temple and across the River of the Dead at the foot of Mount Hylia, the shrine laid hidden under the ground, undisturbed much for countless ages. Only recently had Zelda discovered the ancient medical facility perhaps by serendipity when she passed by the activation pedestal with the Sheikah Slate on her hip, which reacted and prompted the shrine’s doors to open. Although it held great potential to their cause, it remained surrounded in as much mystery as when Zelda first uncovered it.</p>
<p>    Beads of sweat mixed with raindrops cascading down their foreheads, running across their cheeks, and pooling at the tips of their noses. The perpetual storm and ever-present danger constricted their movement, souring their journey into a desperate struggle. The isolated plateau was no stranger to the monster surges--tribes of bokoblins and their moblin leaders often raided the surface, killing the inhabiting communities of faith and driving the survivors into exile. Already, the bricks of the grand staircase, the Temple of Time, the Temples of the Golden Goddesses, and other buildings were shattered, smashed through into debris cluttered with piles of decaying guardians rushing the entrances of the temples. Still, the Zeppelis pressed on: Caesar scanned in all directions for any sign of danger and led Gyro to the doors of the shrine tucked away in a wall of rock past a curtain of evergreens.</p>
<p>    Despite its origins being lost to time, Gregorio and William Zeppelli had readied themselves to serve their king and researched the facility with unrivaled attentioned and utmost care. Naturally, they planned to arm their kin with as much significant information as they could discover to prime them not only to serve their princess but to inherit the tools left behind by their distant ancestors. And now, they executed that role. Gyro carried the body into the external chamber of the shrine, and Caesar, with the Sheikah Slate in hand, opened the door across the long corridor to the heart of the shrine. Inside, the clattering rain faded into gentle humming vibrating from within the strange metallic walls. It almost seemed soothing, and when the door rose into the ceiling, their eyes first settled upon the bed basin closer to the opposite wall from the doorway. The interior chamber was much smaller and rounder than the corridor and featured only the bed basin near the middle of the room. A long extension of the ceiling glowing with soft blue lights hovered above the basin, and an activating pedestal for the Sheikah Slate stood a few feet away from the door. The soft lights and steady, rhythmic humming pervading from deep within the walls eased their weary hearts somewhat, and they mindfully placed the body upon the ground next to the basin. Reverently, they discarded the dented armor and cut through the soiled and tattered clothing from the body. According to their teachings, the healing properties of the sacred shrine waters mandated clean access to wounds to properly restore flesh; any obstacle disturbing the water’s flow to afflicted areas invited the chance of infection brewing in the wound. At the conclusion of their preparations, Caesar and Gyro coordinated their efforts in carrying the body into their arms and lowered it into the basin, and Gyro noted that he nearly lost the trace of a heartbeat. For good measure, he sought out a pulse from the body’s neck, but his repeated attempts demonstrated his frustration and alerted Caesar that the situation had turned dire.</p>
<p>    “There’s barely any pulse there, and what’s worse,” he took one of the body’s hands in his own and sought out a pulse from the wrist. Even still, hardly anything aside from deepening coldness from the flesh pressed between his palms imprinted on his mind. “They feel the coldest that they’ve ever been.” He studied the face and looked over the several deep puncture wounds and shallower lacerations littering the arms, legs, and torso of the body. He and Caesar painstakingly cut out the barbed arrowheads from the flesh, but if he blocked out the sight of the bloodied, reddened flesh or pale patches of skin when he looked upon the face, he could have tricked himself into thinking that they were merely asleep. Peacefully. Unburdened by the hellscape unfolding in a cacophony of screams and monstrous roars beyond the cavern walls.</p>
<p>    “We haven’t properly confirmed the healing abilities of this shrine. We’ve tested scrapes and shallow wounds, but not,” Caesar glanced over the reddened holes and deep trenches carved into the body as the rest of his words had failed him. He continued in a weaker voice when he looked to Gyro, “...Not this. None of our ancestors’  technology is advanced enough to resurrect the dead. Hyrule is losing its future.”</p>
<p>    “What other choice do we have? <em> Siamo alla frutta</em>! Hyrule doesn’t have a chance in Hell anymore of surviving, so we might as well just give this a whirl.” The weighty expression he showed to Caesar elicited disagreement, however.</p>
<p>    “But the Princess--She realized her stand--”</p>
<p>    “<em>Too little, too late </em>. We needed that power yesterday. Now help me fill up this basin.” After a brief period of uneasy silence and somber contemplation, Caesar watched his reflection in the sacred healing waters waver as the basin became filled. The bright neon blue water entered the basin from drain systems at the base and pervaded in every crevice until it consumed the body to the nose.</p>
<p>    “What’s the worst that can happen to Jocelyn?”</p>
<p>    “They die. Or in some sick twist of fate, they might wake up with no memories of what had happened.”</p>
<p>    “None at all?” Gyro shook his head. “It’s all that we can hope for.” Their eyes looked upon the body once more as it lay suspended in tranquility within the waters. Neither of them could predict how long the Slumber of Restoration would last; they understood that it may outright fail or take well beyond their lifetimes to be a success. Only Zelda, with the unknowable vision of the Goddess blossoming to its full potential inside of her, could reasonably know when the fallen Joestar descendant would be ready to rejoin their world.</p>
<p>    “You ask too many questions. Let’s get the hell out of here already before those ugly things find this place.” Caesar turned towards the exit to the exterior chamber, but Gyro stayed behind for a moment longer and examined the body for his last time as if he tried to embed the image into his mind. He might as well; he assumed it would be the final time he could see them. After Gyro followed Caesar out of the inner chamber and sealed the door, the Sheikah Slate, glowing like a soft beacon through the darkness, sunk into the activation pedestal and waited in the ambient silence.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you for making it this far! Please comment and leave some constructive feedback or just tell me what you liked about this chapter. It would be much appreciated.</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>